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OUR 



PROTESTANT FOREFATHERS. 



BY 



y 



WILLIAM STEPHEN GILLY, D.D. 

PREBENDARY OF DURHAM, 
AUTHOR OF "WALDENSIAN RESKARCHES," ETC., ETC. 



FIRST AMER[CAN, 

FROM THE 

T\VT:LFTH LONDON EDITION. 



NEW- YORK : 

ROBERT CARTER, 112 CA NA L-'S^-REET 
J. W BELL, PRINTER, 17 ANN-STREET 




MDCCCXXXVI. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SECTION PAGE 

I. The difference between Romanism and Protestant- 

ism stated 5 

II. The Solemn National Protests of the Sixteenth 

Century were the Crisis, not the beginning of 
the Struggle 10 

III. The Abuses which hastened this Crisis 14 

IV. The Holy CathoUc Church, before the Corruptions 

of the Roman Church produced Divisions 17 

V. The First Protestants — Irenasus — The Waldenses 

—The Albigenses 20 

VI. The Spirit of Protestantism in Britain coeval with 

the Pope's pretended Jurisdiction here 32 

VII. Britain under Romish thraldom, and Wiclif the 

Protestant Liberator 38 

VIII. Wiclif 's Translation of Scripture and his other 

Writings, and the effects produced by them .... 47 

IX. The Lollards — Lord Cobham, and the sufferers 

under the statute of bumins heretics 53 



V CONTENTS. 

SECTION PAGE 

X. Protestantism gains strength^ before Luther, and 

advances in spite of Henry VIII ^62 

XL The Bible in the vernacular tongue becomes an 
engine of wonderful power in the hands of the 
Protestants 69 

XII. Cranmer — The^first authorized English Version of 

the Bible, and the people's reception of it 73 

XIII. The Protestant cause triumphant by virtue of its 

own principles, rather than by the aid of the 
ruling powers » 83 

XIV. Anecdotes illustrative of the character, doctrines 

and conduct of our Protestant luminaries — 
Wiclif, Cranmer, Latimer, Jewel, Rowland 
Taylor, and Bernard Gilpin 91 



¥^^^ 






$ 



OUR PROTESTANT FOREFATHERS. 



Section 1. — The difference between Romanism 
and Protestantism. 

Christians in this quarter of the world are 
divided into two parties — the Roman Catholics 
and the Protestants. The Roman Catholics con.* 
sent to 

The Authority of the Church of Rome, 

The Supremacy of the Pope, 

The Intercession of the Virgin and the Saints, 

The Worship of the Virgin Mary, 

The Worship of Saints, 

The Use of Images, 

The Veneration of Relics, 

The Power of granting Indulgences, 

The Doctrine of Purgatory, and 

The Doctrine of Transubstantiation. 
1 



6 OUR PROTESTANT 

They believe also that the authority of unwrit- 
ten traditions and of Holy Writ are equal, and 
that there are seven sacraments which confer 
grace. The Protestants refuse their assent to 
these things, believing them to be unscriptural ; 
^ and they renounce all submission to the assumed 
"power of the Church of Rome. 

That I may represent the faith of Romanism 
fairly, I give the following extracts from the 
Creed of Pope Pius IV., in the very words in 
which they were published ten years ago in 
defence of the Roman Catholics by Mr. Butler, 
in his "Book of the Roman Catholic Church ;" 
wherein he affirms, "that this Creed is con- 
sidered, in every part of the world, as an accu- 
rate and explicit summary of the Roman Catho- 
lic Faith.'* 

" I most firmly admit and embrace apostolical 
and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other con- 
stitutions and observances of the Church. 

" I also admit the Sacred Scriptures according 
to the sense which the Holy Mother Church has 
held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge 
of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy 



?0^ 



FOREFATHERS. 7 

^ Scriptures ; nor will I ever take or interpret them 
otherwise than according to the unanimous con- 
sent of the Fathers. 

" I profess also, that there are truly and pro- 
perly seven sacraments of the new law, insti- 
tuted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and for the sal- 
vation of mankind, though all are not necessary 
for every one ; viz. baptism, confirmation, eucha- 
rist, penance, extreme unction, order, matrimony; 
and they confer grace ; and of these, baptism, 
confirmation, and order, cannot be reiterated 
without sacrilege. 

" I profess^ likewise, that in the mass is oflTered 
to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice 
for the living and the dead ; and that in the 
most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is 
truly, really, and substantially, the body and 
blood, together with the soul and divinity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; and that there is made a 
conversion of the whole substance of the bread 
into the body, and of the whole substance of the 
wine into the blood, which conversion the whole 
Catholic Church calls Transubstantiation. 

*' I confess, also, that under either kind alone, 
the whole and entire Christ, and a true Sacra- 
ment, is received. 






8 OUR PROTESTANT 



" I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, 
and that the souls detained therein are helped by 
the suffrages of the faithful. Likewise, that the 
saints reigning together with Christ are to be 
honoured and invocated ; that they offer prayers 
to God for us, and that their relics are to be 
venerated. 

"I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, 
and of the Mother of God ever Virgin, and also 
of the other saints, are to be had and retained ; 
and that due honour and veneration are to be 
given to them. 

" I also affirm that the power of indulgences 
was left by Christ in the Church, and that the 
use of them is most wholesome to Christian peo- 
ple. 

"I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, and 
Apostolical Roman Church, the mother and 
mistress of all Churches ; and I promise and 
swear true obedience to the Roman Bishop, the 
successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, 
and Vicar of Christ. 

" I also profess and undoubtedly receive all 
other things delivered, defined, and declared by 
the Sacred Canons and General Councils, and 



f^ ;f 



FOREFATHERS. 



particularly by the Holy Council of Trent : and 
likewise I also condemn, reject, and anathema- 
tise all things contrary thereto, and all heresies 
whatsoever condemned and anathematised by 
the Church. 

" This true Catholic Faith, outof w^hich none 
can be saved, which I now freely profess and 
truly hold, I promise, vow, and swear, most con- 
stantly to hold and profess the same whole and 
entire, with God's assistance, to the end of my 
life." 

Such is the Roman Catholic's creed, in which 
he professes to maintain the power and authority 
and supremacy of the Pope ; the worship of the 
Virgin Mary and saints ; the use of images, 
relics, indulgences, and penances ; and the doc- 
trine of purgatory, of transubstantiation, and of 
seven sacraments. 

In opposition to these tenets, we assert that 
the doctrine of the Pope's supremacy and au- 
thority has led to the most unreasonable assump- 
tion, and to the most unrighteous exercise of 
spiritual power, and to the most terrible suffer- 
ings that man can inflict on man ; — that the in- 
1* 



**yw< 



10 OUR PROTESTANT 

vocation of the Virgin Mary and of the saints, 
and the use of images, have introduced practices 
of idolatry which pious Roman CathoUcs them- 
selves deprecate ; that the doctrines of indul- 
gences, penances, and transubstantiation, have 
been productive of superstitions, blasphemies, 
and immoralities, which those who first invented 
them could not have foreseen. 

Section 2. — The solemn national protests of the 
sia:teenth century were the Crisis^ not the begin- 
ning of the struggle. 

Solemn national protests against the Roman 
Catholic Faith, and extensive separations from 
the Church of Rome, took place in the sixteenth 
century. The two principal movements, the one 
in Germany, the other in England, occurred 
about the same time. That in Germany is 
dated from the year 1530, when the confederated 
advocates of Martin Luther's opinions signed 
their confession of Faith at Augsburgh, and en- 
tered into the alliance called the Union of Smal- 
kald: that in England is usually computed from 
the year 1534, in which Henry VIII., was de- 



FOREFATHERS. ] 1 

clared supreme Head of the English Church ; 
but it might be as properly assigned to the year 
1535, when the first complete English transla- 
tion of the Bible, the Magna Charta of our Pro- 
testantism, the great book of appeal, was publish- 
ed by Authority. 

Now because Luther took a prominent part in 
the religious discussion which preceded the stir 
in Germany, and because Henry VIII. was the 
first British king who renounced all obedience 
to the Roman Bishop, Protestants have been in- 
sultingly told, that their religion is new and up- 
start ; that there was no Protestant faith before 
Martin Luther ; and that the Reformation in 
England owes its birth to an act of kingly caprice, 
and not to the religious feelings of the people. 
We deny that Popery Avas always the religion 
of England before Henry VIII.'s time, and the 
only faith known to our forefathers before the 
sixteenth century. Thus far only is the asser- 
tion correct, that it was the only faith which the 
State permitted our forefathers to avow during 
several centuries. 

Protestantism, or the principle of Resistance, 
opposed to the corruptions and usurpations of the 



13 OUR PROTESTANT 

Roman Church, is to be found so soon as that 
Church began to depart from the simplicity of 
the Gospel: it may be traced through different 
periods of ecclesiastical history, until it broke 
out in those two memorable political convul- 
sions, which ought to be called the grand crisis, 
and not the first struggle of the Protestant cause. 

The Romanists say that the Church has al- 
ways taught the doctrines which we disclaim ; 
and we retort, that they are innovations, and 
that there have always been Protestants to lift 
up their voices against them. Humble servants 
of Christ, one by one, declared against the er- 
rors and domination of the Romish Pontificate, 
long before nations agreed to disown them. 
Small communities asserted their independence 
before large ones threw off the Papal yoke ; and 
we are to look for the origin of our religious sys- 
tem, not in the decrees of princes or in acts of 
parliament, not in political revolutions and pub- 
lic manifestoes — but in the apostolical writings 
and institutions, and in the studies, and contem- 
plations, and firmness of individuals. 

The object of this statement is to draw atten- 
tion to the important fact, that there was a great 



I1^ 



FOREFATHERS, 13 

religious process going on in the minds of men 
in the private stations of Hfe, many ages before 
dominions and principah ties entered on the ques- 
tion of the Pope's supremacy, at that epoch 
which is called the Reformation. We will grant 
that the liberation of great part of Europe from 
Papal usurpations and exaction, after bearing 
the yoke for many centuries, cannot be dated 
earlier than three hundred years back. But we 
strenuously maintain, that a commotion had 
been observed in England, Scotland, Ireland, 
Germany, France, Switzerland, and even in 
parts of Italy and Spain, — and that demands for 
improvement, and a system of opposition to the 
abuses and corruption of the dominant Church, 
had long previously indicated the existence of 
that spirit which we now call Protestantism. 
The good and the wise, however, being gener- 
ally the fewest in number, the early Protestants 
were silenced by ioiprisonment and death, or the 
fear of them ; or were driven into mountains 
and retired places, where, in deprivation and in 
steadfastness, they made the deep valley and the 
forest resound with the praises of God. 



14 OUR PROTESTANT 

Section 3. — The abuses lohich hastened the Crisis, 

At length the " rapacity of the Papal see, the 
mendacious impudence and the barefaced im- 
postures of the friars, the growing immorality of 
the whole clerical body, and, above all, the mon- 
strous abuse of indulgences, ^^"^ became so intolera- 
ble, that men who had any sense of religion 
could bear with them no longer, and the reli- 
gious revolution rolled on like a mighty flood 
through all the countries of the north of Europe. 

The power of granting indulgences being still 
one cf the favourite and soul-ensnaring doctrines 
of the Romish Church, I will digress for a mo- 
ment to show what it had to do, as an immedi- 
ate cause, with the great Protestant movement 
at the time when the British and German na- 
tions threw off the Papal chains. Pope Leo X. 
wanted money, and he " lost no time in replen- 
ishing his empty coffers by the public sale of in- 

* Dunham, * Germanic Empire,' vol. ii. p. 319. "Any 
change," sa3^s this erudite author, " would have heen better 
than the existing state of things. God's providence was con- 
cerned ; either a reformation must be effected, or adieu to re- 
ligion." 



FOREFATHERS. 15 

dulgences ;"* that is to say, he made use of the 
power which his predecessors had usurped over 
Christian churches, and he sent abroad into all 
kingdoms his letters and bulls, promising pardon 
of sins to such as would purchase the pardon 
with money. One of the Pope's agents in this 
nefarious traffic was a Dominican friar of the 
name of Tetzel. The Dominican friars were 
the founders and great supporters of that terrible 
tribunal the Inquisition, which put to death hun- 
dreds of thousands of victims. Tetzel went 
forth preaching the efficacy of the indulgences 
which he had to sell, and boasting of the num- 
ber of souls which had been released from purga- 
tory, and saved from hell by the purchasers of 
them. The forms of the indulgences or pardons 
ran thus : — " By Christ's authority, and that of 
his apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most 
holy Pope, granted and committed to me, I do 
absolve thee first from all ecclesiastical censures, 
in whatever way they have been incurred — and 
also from all the sins, transgressions, and ex- 
cesses, however enormous they may be, &c. &c." 
So successful was Tetzel in this unholy mer- 

* Dunham, * Germanic Empire,' vol. iii. p. 4, 



^^ 



'^^m 



16 OUR PROTESTANT 



chandise, and so blinded had the people been by- 
being kept in the darkness of Popery, that his 
receipts were enormous ; but on one occasion his 
Avickedness produced its own punishment. " Can 
you grant absolution for a crime which a man 
has not yet committed, but intends to commit ?" 
asked one of his hearers. "Yes," replied Tetzel, 
"if the proper sum of money be paid down." 
The man paid the amount required, and received 
the forrri of pardon duly signed and sealed. Soon 
afterwards Tetzel was robbed, and the robber 
produced the indulgence : — "This," said he, "is 
the crime I intended to commit, and here is my 
pardon." 

Other profanations, under the name of reli- 
gion, went on : the wickedness which could 
break out into such an atrocious sin as the sale 
of indulgences stopped at nothing, until even 
the timid and the indifferent were roused to 
action by the increasing abominations of the 
Romish Church ; and the Reformation, which 
had been demanded for ages, proceeded on an 
enlarged scale and with increased acceleration. 

Luther, who then went forth in the strength 
of God to fight the battle of the Lord of Hosts, 



FOREFATHERS. 17 

was one of the most zealous declaimers against 
Popery, and he has for this reason been errone- 
ously called the Father of Protestanisni. But 
had Luther never lived, the Prostestant cause 
would have prospered vmder God's providence, 
and other men, great as he was, would have 
been raised up to vindicate the truth. "Where 
was Protestantism, that new religion, before Lu- 
ther]" we have been insultingly asked. The 
reader who attentively peruses the following 
pages will be able to give an answer. 

Section 4. — The Holy Catholic Church, before 
the corruptions of the Romish Church produced 
divisions. 

For many ages after the rehgion of Jesus 
Christ was first established, the Great body of 
Christians scattered over the whole world were 
called the Holy Catholic Church; the word Cath- 
olic signifymg general or universal. The Chris- 
tians having one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
were agreed also in all the great articles of 
Faith ; and the congregations of different coun- 
tries and kingdoms worshipped their common 



] 8 OUR PROTESTANT 

Saviour according to forms which were so much 
ahke, that though there might be some differ 
ences in point of disciphne, yet, as branches of 
the same stem make one tree, so they made one 
Church of Christ. They corresponded with 
each other; they consuUed each other; they 
helped each other when they were in poverty 
or affliction; and thus they proved to the rest 
of the world that they were brethren, being of 
one mind, living in peace together whenever 
they met, and never striving together except for 
the faith of the Gospel. Such was their affec- 
tionate bond of union, to whatever nation they 
belonged; and well might the heathen say of 
them, "See how they love one another!" One 
great reason why the primitive Christians con- 
tinued fast bound together in this communion of 
saints and fellowship of the Holy Cathohc 
Church, was, that nobody of any character for 
piety or scriptural knowledge ever attempted to 
introduce objects, doctrines, or services, which 
were opposed to the written Word of God, or to 
the simplicity of the Gospel: another reason 
was, that no particular congregation or branch 
of Christ's Universal Church endeavoured to 



FOREFATHERS. 19 

lord it over another, or to assume the pre-emi- 
nence. For very many years there was no such 
thing known in the Church as image-v/orship 
or saint-worship-, or compulsory confession to a 
priest, or prohibitions against marriage, or any 
such introductions of human invention. There 
was nothing forced upon tiie will — there was 
nothing to sear the conscience, or to make a de- 
vout man feel, that, by his conformity to the 
Church, he w^as acting against the revealed 
Word of God. The Christians of those days 
might have had their friendly discussions on 
religious points ; but there was not any intole- 
rant, unscriptural, or irrational doctrine pro- 
pounded in such a manner as was likely to 
divide the Christian world. 

This unanimity continued as long as those 
v/ise precepts of the apostles were observed : — 
"Let no man beguile you of your reward in a 
voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, 
which things indeed have a show of wisdom 
in will-worship and humilit}^, and neglecting of 
the body." Col. ii. 18. 23. "Feed the flock of 
God which is among you, taking the oversight 
thereof, not by constraint, but willingly ; not for 



20 OUR PROTESTANT 

filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as be- 
ing lords over God's heritage, but being ensam- 
ples to the flock." 1 Pet. v. 2, 3. 

Section. 5. — The first Protestants — Irenceus — 
The Waldenses — The Albigenses. 

But when the time came, as St. Paul prophe- 
sied it should come, '' that the man of sin should 
be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth 
and exalteth himself above all that is called 
God, or that is worshipped; whose coming is 
after the working of Satan, with all power, and 
signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceiva- 
bleness of unrighteousness ;" (2 Thess. ii. 3. 4. 
9. 10.) — when the unhappy time came "that 
some should depart from the faith, giving heed 
to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speak- 
ing lies in hypocrisy, and forbidding to marry, 
and commanding to abstain from meats which 
God hath created to be received with thanks- 
giving of them which believe and know the 
truth;" (1 Tim. iv. 1 — 3.) then the seamless 
robe of Christ was torn, and the Church of 
Rome apostatized from the religion taught by 



FOREFATHERS. 21 

Christ and his apostles. Image-worship, and 
worshipping of angels and saints, and forbidding 
to marry, and abstaining from meats, and lord- 
ing it over God's heritage, and the exalting of a 
person called the Pope, sitting in the temple as 
God himself, and lying wonders and other cor- 
ruptions, from thenceforth distinguished the Ro- 
man or most powerful branch of the Church; 
and then humbler and less numerous, but more 
pious congregations, were obliged to protest 
against such errors, and afterwards to separate 
from those who held them ; and this was the 
origin of Protestanism. 

The first act in ecclesiastical history which 
comes under this name, was that of Irenseus,* 
and of the Christians of Gaul, who lived between 
the Rhone and the Alps, about the year of our 
Lord 200, when they protested against the tyran- 
ny and intolerance of Victor, bishop of Rome, 
who endeavoured to force on them his own opin- 
ions and practices. But though this outbreaking 
of intolerance began at Rome, so early as about 

* Irensei Opera, p. 340. Edit. Paris: 1710. -^Victorem, 
fortiter et graviter increpavit," See Dissertatio in libros Irenaei. 
ibid- p. 86. See also Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5. 24. 
2* 



22 OUR PROTESTANT 

the year 200, and was followed by many doings 
among the clergy of that city, of Avhich other 
Christians could not approve, yet it was a great 
length of time before the usurpations and cor- 
ruptions of the Romish Church became so gross, 
as to compel the faithful servants of Christ to 
have no more communion with her. All her 
unscriptural services and practices were intro- 
duced by degrees, one after another ; first a 
small error, and then a greater: as, for example, 
images were first used as memorials, and not as 
objects of worship ; relics of dead saints were 
collected and preserved with more superstition 
than was right, but it was long before they were 
adored. The Virgin Mary, the apostles, and 
saints, after their death, were named with vene- 
ration, and their memory was dearly and res- 
pectfully cherished, as it ought to be now ; but 
it was many ages before they were prayed to, or 
before they were invoked for help and protec- 
tion. In like manner, the clergy were at first 
recommended not to marry ; next, they were for- 
bidden to marry. It was also after the lapse of 
centuries that the doctrine of transubstantiation 
produced the sin of worshipping a consecrated 



FOREFATHERS. 



23 



wafer, and calling it Christ and God ; and that 
the doctrine of pnrgatory led to the profanation 
of receiving money for saying masses for the 
dead, or the shameful traffic of selling indulgen- 
ces. So likewise the exactions, and the usurpa- 
tions, and the pretended power of the Romish 
Church, over all other churches, were gradually 
put forth. Rome, being the capital of the world 
and the seat of empire, her bishops were visited 
very often, and had great respect paid them by 
Christians of other countries. Having better op- 
portunities of communicating wath the pious and 
the learned of all nations, it was naturally sup- 
posed that their information and counsel would 
be more valuable than that of other bishops and 
clergy ; consequently they were more frequently 
consulted, and great deference was paid to their 
decisions. They took advantage of this, and 
they pushed their claims and their impositions 
farther and farther, till their tyranny could be 
endured by the intelligent, the bold, and the 
pious, no longer, and Protestantism spread from 
one place to another. "Successors to the Prince 
of the Apostles," "Vicars of Christ," "Univer- 
sal Bishops," " Gods on Earth," and such like 



24 OUR PROTESTANT 

titles, which the Popes or Bishops of Rome have 
arrogated, were not known during the primitive 
ages of Christianity, nor was Rome then called 
"the Mother and Mistress of Churches," or pro- 
nounced to be "infalhble :" therefore, when she 
insisted upon the power which such titles infer, 
those "who hold the Head," who know that 
only "one is their master, even Christ," deter- 
mined " to stand fast in the liberty wherewith 
Christ had made them free, and not to be en- 
tangled in the yoke of bondage :" and they j^ro- 
tested against the despot Church, and afterwards 
separated from her. The Romish church con- 
tinued, however, still to style herself the " Catho- 
lic Church," when she was no longer catholic or 
universal. Those Protestant Churches only can 
be Catholic, which maintain scriptural doctrines 
and articles of faith in which all true Christians 
can unite. 

Although there never was a period in which 
God did not raise up witnesses unto himself, 
who declared their adherence to the uncorrupt- 
ed Gospel of Christ, and contended for the faith 
delivered to the saints, yet at times they were 
so few and obscure, compared with the multi- 



FOREFATHERS. 25 

tudes who were deceived, as the word of pro- 
phecy foretold, by the power, and signs, and ly- 
ing wonders, and delusions of the " man of sin,'' 
that history makes little mention of them : and 
no wonder, because the historians of the day, 
for several centuries, were themselves among 
the number of those who were ignorant of the 
true faith, and who sided with its enemies. 
But the truth cannot always be concealed ; and 
we learn from the pages of an advocate of some 
of the errors of Rome, w^ho hved at the time,* 
that there was a small body of Protestant Chris- 
tians, in our sense of the term, dwelhng in the 
Cottian Alps, about the year 397. These se- 
cluded Christians had their own bishops and 
their own clergy in their mountain retreats ; 
they had also their own church services, free 
from the corruptions wiiich had then crept into 
the Romish Church. They had no images, no 
saint- worship, no relic -worship, no masses for 
the souls of dead men ; but they permitted their 
clergy to marry, and they worshipped God ac- 

* See the works of Jerome, ' Adv. Vigil.' Epist. 53. My 
learned and indefatigable friend Mr. Faber first pointed out 
this passage to me. 



26 OUR PROTESTANT 

cording to scriptural ordinances. For this they 
were proscribed and cahjmniated by the Ro- 
manists, and they in their turn protested against 
them. It is very astonishing, and a certain 
proof of God's protection, that the descendants 
of these people live in the fastnesses of the same 
mountains, and have continued to Avorship the 
God of their fathers after the way which Pa- 
pists call heresy, and to protest against Rome 
from that time to this. They are now called 
Waldenses, or Vaudois, from the mountain val- 
leys m which they have dwelt so long, and by 
that name they have been known ever since the 
year 1 100. But by what name they were call- 
ed between 397 and 1100, we cannot say, be- 
cause they were not distinctly noticed by chroni- 
clers during that long interval. Perhaps they 
are to be recognised as the Subalpina, Subal- 
pines, or Pasasgii of ancient geography, living 
as they did at the foot of the Alps, in the passes 
between France and Italy. My assertions on 
this part of our subject are supported by the re- 
searches and opinions of that accurate historian, 
Sir James Mackintosh, and of Mr. Le Bas, the 
biographer of Wiclif. " With the dawn of his- 



FOREFATHERS. 27 

tory," says the former, "we discovered some 
simple Christians in the valleys of the Alps, 
where they still exist under the ancient name of 
Vaudois, who, by the hght of the New Testa- 
ment, saw the extraordinary contrast between 
the purity of primitive times, and the vices of 
the gorgeous and imperious hierarchy which 
surrounded them."* 

Mr. Le Bas has gone more at length into the 
argument. " There seems," he says, "to be a 
strong presumption in favour of the belief that 
the people of the valleys of Piedmont, known by 
the name of the Vaudois or Waldenses, had pre- 
served from a very early period a far purer faith 
than that which was possessed by the great body 
of Christendom. The history of this Subalpine 
Protestantism is indeed enveloped in such deep 
obscurity, that any attempt to investigate it 
would far exceed the limits or the design of the 
present work. We cannot however reflect with- 
out wonder and delight upon one precious docu- 
ment of unquestionable authenticity, which may 
be regarded as a confession of the faith of these 
people in the twelfth century. The relic in 

* 'England,' by Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 321. 



28 OUR PROTESTANT 

question is an ancient poem called ' The Noble 
Lesson,' containing a metrical abridgement of 
the history and doctrine of the Old and New 
Testament, in the original language of the 
country, and evidently compiled for the purpose 
of perpetuating among the people the principles 
of sound belief. It is beyond all doubt that the 
essential doctrines and principles of our Refor- 
mation will be found in this rehgious formulary, 
which concludes with an exposure of the gross 
errors of the Papacy, the simony of the priest- 
hood, masses, and prayers for the dead, the im- 
postures of absolution, and the abuses of the 
power of the keys. From that time to the pre- 
sent, the same opinions have been inflexibly 
maintained by these simple mountaineers, who 
have borne a perpetual and heroic testimony to 
the faith of their fathers, in the midst of the 
most merciless and appalling persecutions. The 
extent and antiquity of the Waldensian perver- 
sion is a subject of perpetual complaint with the 
Papal authorities of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries ; ' and if to this consideration we add 
the traditions uniformly prevalent among the 
uncorrupted shepherds, their own confident 

m 



w 



FOREFATHERS. 29 



claims of immemorial purity in faith and doc- 
trine, their obscure and solitary abodes, and their 
remoteness from the scene of pontifical splen- 
dours and despotism, we shall find but little diflS- 
culty in the surmise that the valleys of Pied- 
mont may from primitive, perhaps from apostolic 
times, have witnessed a more undefiled profes- 
sion and practice of the Gospel, than can easily 
be found amoDg the more degenerate communi- 
ties of Christian Europe. To myself, I confess, 
the probability appears to be, not that the Vau- 
dois shook oflf the superstitions of the Romish 
Church, but rather that they had never put 
them on ; and that when the hand of power 
was stretched forth to force the spotted garment 
vipon them, they revolted at the oppression, and 
at length recorded their protest against it, in the 
form of that immortal Lesson, which to this day 
may be regarded as their spiritual petition of 
right."* Mr, Le Bas adds in a note, " I cannot 
but agree with Mr. Gilly, that ^ it i? much more 
likely that a race of mountaineers, secluded from 
the world, should have preserved the purity and 
simplicity of the primitive Church, than that 
* *Life of Wiclif,' p. 28—31. 

3 



30 OUR PROTESTANT 

they should suddenly become Scripture readers 
and reformers in the twelfth century, after hav- 
ing been overwhelmed in the darkness that pre- 
vailed in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centu- 
ries.''* 

There was another community which attract- 
ed notice in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
by confessions of faith greatly at variance with 
those of the Romanists. These were the Al- 
bigenses, that unhappy people of the south of 
France, whose history is written in letters of 
blood, whose preachers were in England as 
early as 1166, and who were entirely swept 
away from the face of the earth, in a crusade 
against them excited by Pope Innocent III, 

At a conference at Montreal in the year 
1206, the Albigenses maintained, as AUix has 
shown, — 

"I. That the Church of Rome was not the 
holy Church, nor the Spouse of Christ, but that 
it was a Church which had drunk in the doc- 
trine of devils. 

" II. That the mass was neither instituted by 
Christ nor his Apostles, but a human invention* 

* See * Waldensian Researches,' p. 113. 



FOREFATHERS. gj 



it 



III. That the prayers of the Hving are un- 
profitable for the dead. 

"IV. That the purgatory mamtained in the 
Church of Rome is no better than a human in- 
vention, to satisfy the avarice of the priests. 

" V. That the saints ought not to be prayed 
unto. 

" VI. That transubstantiation is a human in- 
vention and erroneous doctrine ; and that the 
worshipping of the bread is manifest idolatry. 

"That therefore it was necessary to sepa- 
rate from the Church of Rome, in which the 
contrary was said and taught, because one can- 
not assist at the mass without partaking of the 
idolatry there practised, nor expect salvation by 
any other means than by Jesus Christ, nor 
transfer to creatures the honour which is due to 
the Creator, nor say, concerning the bread, that 
it is God, and worship it as such, without incur- 
ring the pain of eternal damnation, because 
idolaters shall not inherit the kingdom of 
heaven. For all these things, which they as- 
serted, they were hated and persecuted to 
death." 



32 OUR PROTESTANT 

Section 6. — The spirit of Protestantism in 
Britain coeval with the Pope^s pretended jurisdic- 
tion here. 

But many of those, who allow that in some 
countries there existed inconsiderable communi- 
ties, which from early times declared against all 
connexion with the Romish Church, do still as- 
sert that Papal Christianity was the most an- 
cient form of the Christian religion in England, 
and that there was no Protestantism among our 
ancestors before the sixteenth century. 

We will go back nearly a thousand years,* 
from the Romanists' date of the origin of Eng- 
lish Protestantism to the time when Augustin 
arrived in England ; and the following dramatic 
description, given by a Roman Catholic historian, 
of the attempt of that missionary from Rome to 
subjugate the British clergy to the control of the 

* " If we consult an earlier period, we shall find king Ar- 
thur promoting his chaplain to the Archbishopric of York. 
Galf. Monu. 9. 8, and British Synods nominating Prelates for 
British Sees, without the slightest reference to Rome. Spel- 
man. Concil. 1. 60, 61." 



FOREFATHERS. 33 

Pope, shall show whether there were then 
Christian communities, independent of the 
Church of Rome, in this island, or not. 

'^ Gregory (the Pope) had written to Augus- 
tin, that he had subjected all the bishops of 
Britain to his authority. The missionary, with 
the aid of Ethelbert, prevailed on the British 
prelates to meet him at a place which has since 
been called Augustin's Oak, in Worcestershire. 
After a long and unavailing debate, the confer- 
ence was adjourned to another day. In the in- 
terval the Britons consulted a neighbouring her- 
mit, who advised them to watch the behaviour 
of Augustin ; if he rose to meet them, they 
were to consider him a man of unassuming dis- 
position, and to listen to his demands ; but if he 
kept his seat, they should condemn him of pride, 
and reject his authority. With this sapient ad- 
monition, which left to accident the decision of 
the controversy, seven bishops, with Dinoth, ab- 
bot of Bangor, repaired to the place of confer- 
ence.* Augustin happened to be seated, and 
did not rise at their arrival : both his reasons 

* For one of the best accounts of this transaction, see Spel- 
man.Concil. L 104—110. 

3* 



34 OUR PROTESTANT 

and his authority were consequently despised. 
In 'points of doctrine there had been no differ- 
ence between them ; and to facilitate their com- 
pUance in other matters, the archbishop had re- 
duced his demands to three heads ; — that they 
should observe the Catholic computation of 
Easter ; should adopt the Roman rite, in the ad- 
ministration of baptism ; and should join with 
the missionaries in preaching to the Saxons. 
Each of these requests, in obedience to the ad- 
vice of the hermit, was pertinaciously refused."^ 
In an ancient manuscript, preserved among 
the Parker MSS. of Corpus Christi College, 
Cambridge, there is a passage to this effect : — 
" After the Saxons had become Christians by 
means of Austin, in such sort as Austin had 
taught them, the Britons would not eat or drink 
with them, because they corrupted with super- 
stition, images, and idolatry, the true religion of 
Christ." The evidence of the old chronicler, 
who wrote thus, may be thought to require 
some confirmation, and we can furnish it, upon 
the undoubted testimony of the venerable Bede, 
who also shows that there was an intimate con- 

* Lingard's * History of England,' vol. i. p. 112. 



FOREFATHERS. JS 

nexion between the ancient British, Irish, and 
Scottish Churches, and a common adherence to 
observances differing from those of the Church 
of Rome : — " We learnt through Bishop Daga- 
nus, when he came to this island, and through 
the abbot Columbanus, when he came to Gaul, 
that the Scots* (of Ireland) do not differ from 
the Britons in their observances. For Bishop 
Daganus, when he came to us, refused not only 
to eat with us at the same table, but in the same 
house." Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. c. 4. Again : 
— "Even to this day, the Britons are in the 
habit of expressing their contempt both for the 
faith and the religion of the Anglo-Saxons, and 
to hold no more intercourse with them than with 
the Pagans," lib. 2. c. 20. Bede made the first 
of these two statements^ on the authority of 
Laurentius, who succeeded Augustin in the see 
of Canterbury, and who played off the cheat of 
lacerating his own shoulders, and pretending 

* Bede farther shows, Eccles. Hist. lib. 3. c. 3. 4 and 25, that 
the Scottish clergy of lona, or Icolmkill, and its numerous de- 
pendencies in Scotland, were still independent of Rome 100 
years after Laurentius complained of the Non-Conformity of 
the^itish, Irish, and Scottish Churches. 



36 OUR PROTESTANT 

that he had been flogged by St. Peter, for show- 
ing too httle zeal. Pretty good proof this, that 
although Pope Gregory took upon himself to in- 
vest Augustin and his successors with authority 
over all the clergy and bishops of Britain, yet 
the British Churchmen would neither submit to 
the Romish discipline, nor adopt the corruptions 
of image-worship, saint, and rehc-worship, &c., 
which the Itahan pontiff attempted to impose 
upon them. The religion of Rome, therefore, 
was not at that period the universal religion of 
our Christian ancestors. 

We will take another period of history. Wil- 
fred, a Northumbrian bishop, was deposed by the 
authorities of his native country in the year 680. 
He went to Rome, and implored the Pope to re- 
instate him. This appeal to the Papal see, and 
the Pope^s mandate for his restoration to the 
bishopric, were treated with equal contempt by 
the king and clergy of Northumberland, who 
declared that they would not permit the Roman 
prelate to exercise jurisdiction over them.* 

These protests were against the authority of 

* It was many years before Wilfrid was restored. See 
Bede, EccL Hist. 5. 20. and Spel. Cone. 1. 162. 203. 206. 



FOREFATHERS. 37 

the Roman Church ; now for an instance of 
EngHsh rejection of the doctrines of Romanism 
at a very early period : — 

In the year 787, the Council of Nice declared 
most solemnly that image-worship was to be ob- 
served by Christians. The Church of Rome 
approved of the canon. The matter was sub- 
mitted to a synod of the clergy of England five 
years afterwards, and it was pronounced by 
Enghsh theologians, that the Council had " de- 
termined many things inconsistent with, and 
contrary to, the true faith ; especially the wor- 
ship of images, a usage altogether execrated by 
the Church of God."* 

Alcuin also, an Englishman, who flourished at 
that time, wrote an epistle to prove that image- 
worship, and the canon of the Council of Nice, 
which sanctioned it, were contrary to Scripture. 

We will conclude this part of our subject by 
a quotation from Blackstone. " The ancient 
British Church, by whomsoever planted, was a 
stranger to the Bishop of Rome, and his pretend- 

* See Soames's * Bampton Lectures.' Not. Binii ad 2 Nic. 
Syn. et Fran. Cone. ; Magd. Cent. 8. c. 9, and Spel. Cone* J. 
306—8. 



38 OUR PROTESTANT 

ed authority : but the Pagan Saxon invaders 
having driven the professors of Christianity to 
the remotest corners of our island, their own 
conversion was afterwards effected by Augustin 
the monk, and other missionaries from the court 
of Rome. This necessarily introduced some 
few of the Papal corruptions, in point of faith 
and doctrine, but w^e read of no civil authority 
claimed by the Pope in these kingdoms, till the 
end of the Norman conquest."* 

Section 7. — Britain under Romish thraldom, and 
Wiclif the Protestant liberator. 

Thus England had witnesses, at an early 
period of her history, to testify against the inno- 
vations of Rome ; but though she produced a 
noble array of divines, who, from time to time, 
did all they could to resist the invaders of her 
spiritual rights, at length she became enslaved 
by Papal tyranny. Under the Anglo-Saxon 
dynasties the island was comparatively indepen- 
dent, and was more in communionji with, than 

* Blackstone's ' Commentaiies,' b. 4 : c. 8. 
fSee many proofs of this in Spel. Cone. vol. i. pp. 153. 182. 
194. 203. 237. 293. 317. 320. 



FOREFATHERS. g9 

in subjection to, the Italian Pontiff; but the Nor- 
man line of monarchs, after William the Con- 
queror, submitted to the dictation of the Popes, 
and conceded one point after another, until the 
nation found itself completely under the foot of 
a foreign bishop. 

The Pope arrog-ated the right not only of 
crowning but of uncrowning her princes ; and 
even now an Englishman's cheek burns with 
shame at the recollection of Henry II. consenting 
to be scourged at the com.mand of that alien ; 
and of his pusillanimous son, John, laying the 
crown of England at the legate's footstool, and 
taking it back from his hands, as the acknow- 
ledged vassel and tributary of Rome. 

The benighted people of that day, having orice 
surrendered their spiritual liberties, were forced 
to bend their necks to the vilest and most 
offensive species of thraldom which their bond- 
masters of the Popedom could inflict. 

By a sentence called an interdict^ the whole 
kingdom, on an offence given to the Pope, in 
John's reign, was deprived of the public exercise 
of religion : the churches were ordered to be shut, 
and the clergy to withhold their ministrations ; 



■^TRV.v 



40 OUR PROTESTANT 

and thus did the Holy Father consign her chil- 
dren to the direst condition that man can imagnie, 
— to a famine of the Word of God. Inconsis- 
tency worthy of Romanism ! 

The Christian, according to the Romish 
Church, cannot be saved without the priest and 
the forms of religion ; and he who called himself 
Christ's Vicar upon earth interdicted all priestly 
functions and every religious rite. The doors of 
the sanctuary were closed ; the sacraments were 
forbidden; children were unbaptized, and the 
dead were deprived of their funeral obsequies. 
A nation which can tamely bear such an exercise 
of spiritual prerogative as this will sink very deep 
into the slough of debasement before she makes 
any struggle to extricate herself. It was 150 
years after this interdict, ere an avenger of the 
rehgious sufferings of England laid the first axe 
to the root of the noisome tree, which, over- 
shadowed and poisoned the land. Wiclif, who 
was born in 1324, and died 1384, was the man 
to whom we owe this debt of gratitude : and the 
following brief sketch of the ignorance which he 
strove to dispel, and of abuses to which he op- 
posed himself, will show that if he, or one like 



FOREFATHERS. 41 

him, had not lifted up his voice of denunciation, 
the very stones would have cried cut. 

The Bible was literally a sealed book; for there 
was no such thing as a complete version of Scrip- 
tures in the English tongue until Wiclif achieved 
a translation.* Even after Wiclif's own copy 
was finished, the value of a New Testament was 
£2 I65. 6d, equal to £30 now. There were in- 
deed some few translations and paraphrases of 
portions of Scripture, but these were doled out 
sparingly and unwillingly ; for the very idea of 
opening the sacred page to the people, and of 
making it common to the laity, was thought to 
be sacrilegious. "It is casting the Gospel-pearl 
abroad to be trodden under foot of swine," said 
Knyghton, a Romish historian of that period. If 
the book of our holy faith, by which only they 
could be judged, was so neglected, no wonder 
that the doctrines, conversation, and conduct of 
the clergy were unworthy of their profession, and 
that priests "dealt falsely," and "ate up the 
people as it were bread." Many of the parochial 

* The price of a Bible in Latin, an unknown tongue to all 
but the learned, was as much as a labouring man's price of 
work for fifteen years, and equal to 300Z, of our money. 

4 



43 OUR PROTESTANT 

benefices were held by foreigners;* French^ Ital- 
ians, and Spaniards, nominated by the Pope, 
who lived out of the country, without performing 
any sacred functions, and consumed the produce 
of their livings at a distance from their flock. 
This non-residence of the clergy invited multi- 
tudes of the order of Mendicants, or begging 
friars, who proved as great a plague, and as de- 
vouring as the locusts of Egypt. In the first in- 
stance, a few Dominicans were permitted to es- 
tablish themselves in the country : they professed 
to be humble and poor, and grateful for protec- 
tion; but their numbers and their pretensions 
increased, till the kingdom swarmed with them, 
and groaned under their extortions and their li- 
centiousness. They beset the chambers of the 
weak and the superstitious, and the beds of the 
dying; and, persuading them that there was no 
salvation without their passports to Heaven, 
much of the property of the land fell into the 

* In 1367, some foreign pluralists were holding as many as 
twenty places of preferment. Great complaints had previonsly 
been made of these harpies. One Pope sent his precepts to 
three English bishops to provide for thirty Italian clergy out of 
the first vacancies. See '^ Turner's England," viii. 69. 



FOREFATHERS. 43 

hands of these bare-footed pretenders to poverty, 
by the bequests of their dupes, who impoverished 
their famiUes under the hope of saving their own 
souls. It is said that fraternities of the same 
order are now finding their way again into Eng- 
land : if so, let Wiclif's words be remembered — 
'* God says, that evil teachers are the cause of 
the destruction of the people : and friars are the 
principal evil teachers : they are the principal 
cause of destroying the world." 

In this state of things, when the whole land 
was everrun with the agents of Rome, preaching 
up the Pope's supremacy, and bribing to submis- 
sion, by pardons and indulgences, how great 
must have been the vigour of Wiclif's mind, the 
independence of his soul, to take his stand in the 
citadel of truth, to be fearless of the frowns and 
the contempt that awaited him, and regardless 
of the clamour that would be excited against 
him! The Romanists at this very time felt 
themselves to be so strong in England, that the 
Pope revived his claim of sovereignty over the 
realm, and had the impudence and the folly to 
demand a yearly tribute often thousand marks, 
as the acknowledgment of our vassalage. And 



44, 



OUR PROTKbi ANT 



on what ground did the Pope make this de- 
mand 1— In virtue of an impost granted by King 
John, and to be paid for ever, for the removal of 
the interdict laid on his subjects ! So then the 
nation could only be absolved for money ! 

Englishmen ! was not Wiclif justified in pro- 
testing against Popery, and in calling upon his 
countrymen to break the fetters of Rome, when 
an Italian priest, whose seat of power was far dis- 
tant, sued your king for homage and tribute 1 
Half the landed property was already in the 
hands of the Romish priesthood : rapacious aliens, 
strangers to our manners and customs, who were 
totally unable to speak the language of England, 
and who never landed on her coasts, enjoyed 
many of her dignities and benefices, and drained 
her of her wealth. The Popes levied a tax on 
Church income, which amounted to five times as 
much as the king's revenues ; they exacted the 
first-fruits of all benefices ; they claimed the 
goods of all who died without wills ; and Avhen 
they had thus made the nation to crouch be- 
tween two burthens — impoverishment and dis- 
grace, they thought to rivet the chains more du- 
rably, and to imprint the mark of the beast more 



0m 



FOREFATHERS. 45 

indelibly, by the burning brands of homage and 
tribute. 

What has been, may be ; and the battle which 
Wiclif fought for his native land will have to be 
fought again, unless men's eyes and ears are open 
in time to the stealthy march of their Romish 
assailants. Wiclif did not preach against Rome 
till her enormities cried aloud ; until her clergy 
were so corrupt and profligate, that, as Chaucer, 
the poet of that age, too truly expressed it, — 

To put pennies in their purse, 
They will sell both Heaven and Hell. 

Was it not time to cry — " Come out of her, my 
people," when the ministers of the Roman Church 
ceased to preach the words of eternal life — but 
made lying miracles, and legendary histories, 
and puerile and monstrous fables of deliverances 
from purgatory, the subjects of their pulnit dis- 
courses ; when these were the themes in which 
they beguiled and led captive the souls of men, 
and banished the sound of the Gospel from the 
earth ? 

There are men professing this same Popish 
faith that impoverished England afore-time, and 
4* 



46 OUR PROTESTANT 

committed her best sons to the flames, who are 
now clamouring for, and prophesying, the down- 
fall of the Church of England ; and they have 
had the cunning to win over to their side the in- 
fidel and half-believer, and they are trying to in- 
duce the orthodox dissenters of England to make 
common cause with them : and an outcry, loud 
and discordant, is raised against the Church, 
and there is a clamour for her destruction ; and if 
she fails, she will fall not in her worst, but in her 
best days, when she is trying to put her house in 
order, — when her ministers, high and low, are 
more distinguished for good conduct and learning 
and zeal, than at any former period of her his- 
tory. 

But even if her revenues be taken away, and 
the polished corners of her temple be demolished, 
yet will she not fall ! Hcx episcopacy will re- 
main ; her orders of priesthood and her decent 
administrations will remain. Her liturgy will 
outlive the mandate for her destruction ; her con- 
solations and her sacraments will survive, and 
her voice will yet be heard high above the storm: 
— " The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he 
hath not given me over unto death,'* 



FOREFATHERS. 47 

What a stir it must have made, as his biogra- 
pher says, when Wichf pubUshed his work "On 
the Truth and Meaning of Scripture," and when, 
instead of preaching about the good offices of the 
saints, and the influence and intercession of the 
Virgin, he spoke of the one only Name by which 
men can receive health and salvation ! 

How the astonished congregations must have 
listened with admiring earnestness, when, in- 
stead of magnifying saints and anchorites and 
monks, and boasting of the signs and wonders 
wrought by their hands, "he solemnly dwelt 
on the supreme majesty of Jehovah," — on the 
freedom and sovereignty of divine grace, — on the 
terms of forgiveness and salvation, — and on the 
wonders of atonement ! These were his topics, 
— the same, Mr. Le Bas most truly observes, as 
become a Protestant pulpit at the present day. . 

Section 8. — Wiclips translation of the Scriptures^ 
and his other writings, and the effects produced by 
them. 

But not to preaching only did Wiclif trust for 
the instruction of the people ; and therefore it 



48 OUR PROTESTANT 

was that he translated the Bible into his native 
languag-^, and multiplied copies as far as he 
could, and placed them in the hands of Scripture- 
readers, whom he sent forth to read out of the 
Book of L fe, that the men of England might 
hear them speak in their own tongues, wherein 
they were born, the wonderful works of God. It 
was this Enghsh version of the Scripture, which 
made the Sacred Volume more known to the laity 
at large, than it was before known to the clergy 
themselves ; and thus, as Dr, Lingard, the Ro- 
man Catholic historian, confesses, "a spirit of 
inquiry was generated, and the seeds were sown 
of that religious revolution, which in a little more 
than a century astonished and convulsed the na- 
tions of Europe." 

Here then, in our own land, according to 
the acknowledgment cf one hostile to Protes- 
tants, there was Protestantism before Luther, 
there was a vindication of the religious privileges 
of the native against the intrusive exactions of 
the alien. The prodigious importance of en- 
couraging the people to read the Word of God 
in their own tongue, was soon felt, and it brought 
down a storm of persecution upon the reformer's 



FOREFATHERS. 49 

head. Nothing has ever exasperated or alarmed 
the Romish priesthood so much as the circula- 
tion of Scripture in the vernacular language 
without notes or comment. 

As soon as Wiclif s Bible began to do its work, 
a bill was brought into parliament to forbid the pe- 
rusal of the English Bible by the laity. But for 
that time it was thrown out ; and the translator's 
defence of his version, and vindication of the peo- 
ple's right to have the free use of Scripture, is an 
effort of powerful reasoning, which is well worthy 
of being recited in our own days, when Popish 
influence is again threatening Protestant princi- 
ples and Bible-reading. " To condemn it," said 
Wicliffi "is to condemn the Holy Ghost, who 
gave the Word of God in tongues to the Apostles 
of Christ, that they might speak it in all lan- 
guages that were ordained of God under Heaven. 
Scripture is the Faith of the Church : therefore, 
as secular men ought to know the Faith, so it is 
to be taught to them in whatever language is 
best known to them. The truth of the Faith is 
clearer and more exact in Scripture than the 
priests know how to express it : it is expedient, 
therefore, that the faithful should themselves 



50 



OUR PROTESTANT 



search out and discover the sense ofthe Faith, 
by having the Scriptures in a language which 
they know and understand. He who hinders 
this, does his endeavour that the people should 
continue in a damnable and unbelieving state. 
Prelates, and the Pope, and friars, and others, 
may prove defective: accordingly Christ and his 
Apostles converted the world by making known 
to them the truths of scripture in a language fa- 
miliar to the people; and for this purpose the 
Holy Spirit gave them the knoAvledge of all 
tongues. Why then should not Christ's disci- 
ples of the present day take freely from the same 
loaf, and distribute to the people 1 All Christians 
must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, 
and be answerable to him for all the goods, 
wherewith he has entrusted them. It is there- 
fore necessary that all the faithful should know 
these goods, and the use of them ; for an answer 
by prelate or attorney will not then avail, but 
every one must answer in his own person." 

" The Scripture alone is trutlu^^ " The Scripture 
alone is the faith ofthe Church,^^ This was Wic- 
lif s argument — " The grand and solid maxim," 
eays his eloquent biographer, " upon which, as 



FOREFATHERS. ^ 

upon the Eternal Rock, he built up the defence 
of his great undertaking, and indeed the whole 
fabric of his scheme of Reformation. We have 
here the vigorous germ of Protestantism^ cast by 
him with a bold and vigorous hand into the ge- 
nerous soil of his country, there to lie for a long 
and tempestuous period, to all appearance dor- 
mant and powerless till the season should arrive 
for its starting into life." 

After the death of this undaunted reformer, his 
enemies, and the haters of light, succeeded in 
obtaining a decree of convocation to this effect : 
— that " no one shall translate any text of 
Sacred Scripture, by his own authority, into the 
English or any other tongue, in the way of 
book, treatise, or tract ; and no publication of 
this sort composed in the time of John Wiclif, or 
since, shall be read either in part or in whole, 
either in public or in private, under pain of the 
greater excommunication, until such translation 
shall be approved by the diocesan of the place ; 
every one who shall act in contradiction to this 
order to be punished as an abettor of heresy and 
error." 

The works v/hich Wiclif left behind him bear 



52 OUR PROTESTANT 

witness to his most astonishing dihgence ; among 
others, it is said that as many as three hundred 
of his famihar sermons still remain. In these 
and other treatises, we find that his active and 
enhghtened mind was constantly engaged in ex- 
posing errors, against which we now protest, es- 
pecially the doctrine of transubstantiation, auri- 
cular confession, Papal indulgences. Papal ex- 
communication and interdicts, and Papal supre- 
macy. Wiclif died in peace at his rectory, not 
because his enemies were moderate and forbear- 
ing, but because they dared not pursue him into 
the district which his presence and his virtues 
had rendered a very sanctuary and city of refuge. 
He was so venerated by his parishioners and 
neighbours, that when his spirit took its flight to 
the realms of everlasting rest, every memorial of 
him was preserved with the most devoted affec- 
tion ; and the stranger who visits Lutterworth 
may see the chair on which he was wont to sit, 
and on which he died ; the oak of the pulpit from 
which he preached ; the table on which he 
wrote ; and a relic of the cloak which covered his 
venerable person. 



FOREFATHERS, 53 

Section 9. — The Lollards — Lord Cobham, and 
the sufferers under the statute of burning heretics. 

The death of WicUf, which took place in 
1384, checked, but did not crush, the springing* 
plant of the Reformation. His codes, his opinions, 
and his principles, were circulated by his follow- 
ers, who were called Lollards ; but why so called, 
we cannot satisfactorily explain. In spite of 
every attempt to keep them down, the Lollard 
Protestants increased in numbers, and spread 
from one county to another. Most of their te- 
nets were directed against the doctrines and pos- 
sessions of the Romish Church. They had am- 
ple cause to declaim against doctrines which dis- 
honoured God and enslaved men ; and against 
possessions held in England, in great part by 
foreigners, and all under the tenure of a foreign- 
er's permission, at the will of the Pope, The 
Romanists knew the weakness of their cause too 
well to trust its defence to argument and preach- 
ing ; therefore they obtained an act of parlia- 
ment, in 1399, under which they were empowered 
to burn the heretics. This act is called the statute 
5 



54 



OUR PROTESTANT 



de Heretico Comhurendo^ i. e. for the burning of 
heretics. What a parhament ! What a state of 
things ! What a picture of Popery ! Here is 
no conceahiient ! The object of the bill was 
openly professed — to hum heretics ! The pream- 
ble of the act runs in this style : — " Whereas di- 
vers unauthorized preachers go about teaching 
new doctrines and heretical opinions, making 
conventicles and confederacies, holding schools, 
writing books, misinforming the people, and daily 
committing enormities too horrible to be heard," 
&c. : it then enacts, — " Therefore, if any person 
so convicted shall refuse to abjure such preachings, 
doctrines, opinions, schools, and informations, 
he shall be burnt on a high place before the peo- 
ple, that such punishment may strike terror into 
the minds of others." This account of the pro- 
ceeding is copied from a Roman Catholic's his- 
tory of it (Dr. Lingard's.) Observe, therefore, 
under the Roman Catholic establishment in this 
country, when the Papists were in power, (that 
establishment and that power against which Pro- 
testants are so called for protesting,) men were 
to be burnt for teaching new doctrines and heretical '-^ 
opinions^ making conventicles and confederacies y 



FOREFATHERS. 55 

holding schools^ loriting books^ and misinforming 
the people ! The Act of Parliament specifies no 
other crime ; for the charge " of daily committing 
enormities too horrible to be Aeard," means nothing: 
if any enormity had really been committed by the 
Lollard Protestants, their adversaries would have 
been too glad to state it fully and by name, to 
justify the severity of this Burning Act. B ut this 
statute was not rigid enough ; therefore the 
House of Commons, which was full of Roman 
Catholics in that day, petitioned the King, that 
" when any man or woman was taken and im- 
prisoned for LoUardism, he might be instantly put 
on his answer, and have such judgment as he 
deserved, for an example to others of such wicked 
sect, that they might soon cease from their 
wicked preachings, and keep themselves to the 
Christian faith. 

Popery and Protestantism now began fairly to 
display their opposite characters in England at 
the rehgious trials and executions which took 
place. In 1400, William Sautre, rector of Lynn, 
in Norfolk, after begging that he might be per- 
mitted to dispute before the Lords and Commons 
on the subject of reUgion, was brought to trial, 



56 OUR PROTESTANT 

and burnt on charges of which the following 
were the principal : — " He saith that he will not 
worship the cross on which Christ suffered, but 
only Christ that suffered upon the cross ;" also, 
" that he would sooner worship a temporal king 
than the aforesaid wooden cross :" also, " that 
every priest and deacon is more bound to preach 
the Word of God, than to say the canonical 
hours :" also, " that after pronouncing of the sa- 
cramental words of the body of Christ, the bread 
remaineth of the same nature that it was before, 
neither doth it cease to be bread." 

Soon afterwards, John Badby was committed 
to the flames for no greater crime ^ than this 
avowal : — " After the consecration the bread re- 
maineth the same material bread which it was 
before ; nevertheless, it is a sign or sacrament of 
the Living God. I believe the Omnipotent God 
in Trinity to be One. But if every consecrated 
host be the Lord's body, than there are twenty 
thousand Gods in England." 

In 1417, during Henry V.'s reign, the cele- 
brated Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was 
roasted alive at a slow fire, after having been v^: 
condemned as a heretic ; or to use the words of 



FOREFATHERS. 57 

his sentence, which sets forth Popery and Protes- 
tantism in contradistinction, because " we have 
found him not only an evident heretic in his own 
person, but also a mighty maintainer of other he- 
retics, against the faith and religion of the holy 
and universal Church of Rome ; namely, about 
the two sacraments of the altar and of penance, 
besides the Pope's power and pilgrimages."* 

The offences of which Lord Cobham was 
guilty, were his maintenance of a great number 
of itinerant preachers in many parts of the coun- 
try; his care in collecting, transcribing, and cir- 
culating the works of Wiclif among the common 
people, and more especially his zeal in having 
copies of Wiclif 's Bible multiplied at a very great 
expense to himself. In vindication of this martyr 
from the calumnies of his adversaries, I will add 
his own account of his religious opinions :— 

*' 1. I believe that the most worshipful sacra- 
ment of the altar is Christ's body in the form of 
bread. 

" 2. That every man who would be saved must 
forsake sin, and do penance for sins already com- 
•mitted, with true and very sincere contrition. 
* « State Trials,' vol. i, p. 46. 
6* 



Wr 



58 OUR PROTESTANT 

"3. That images might be allowable to re- 
present and give men lively ideas of the passion 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the martyrdom 
and good lives of the saints ; but if any man give 
that worship to dead images which is due only 
to God, or put such hope and trust in the help of 
them as he should do in God, he becomes a 
grievous idolater. ^ 

" 4. That the matter of pilgrimages may be 
settled in a few words : a man may spend all 
his days in pilgrimages, and lose his soul at last; 
but he that knows the holy commandments of 
God, and keepeth them, shall be saved, though 
he never visit the shrines of the saints, as men 
now do in their pilgrimages to Canterbury, Rome, 
and other places." 

During Lord Cobham's trial, a scene and a 
dialogue took place, strongly characteristic of the 
principles of the two parties. 

Archbishop Arundel recommended Cobham to 
ask for absolution. " I never yet trespassed 
against you," he replied, "and therefore I do 
not feel the want of your absolution." Then 
kneeling down, he exclaimed, " I confess myself 
here unto thee, my Eternal Living God, that I 



FOREFATHERS. 59 

have been a grievous sinner. Good Lord, I 
humbly ask thee mercy : of thee have I need of 
absolution." 

He was asked, " Do you believe that after the 
words of consecration there remains any material 
bread !" 

" The Scriptures, he answered, make no men- 
tion of material bread. I believe that Christ's 
body remains in the form of bread. In the Sa- 
crament there is both Christ's body and bread : 
the bread is the thing that we see with our eyes, 
but the body of Christ is hid, being seen only by 
faith." 

One of the bishops exclaimed vehemently, " It 
is foul heresy to call it bread !" Cobham re- 
plied, '' St. Paul the Apostle was as wise a man 
as you, and perhaps as good a Christian, and yet 
he calls it bread." 

Dr. Walden, the prior to the Carmalites, now 
lost all patience, and exclaimed, "What rash 
and desperate people are these followers of 
Wiclif!" 

The witness which Lord Cobham then bare 
to Wicklif 's virtues, is a most valuable testimony 



60 OUR PROTESTANT 

to that great man's worth, and to the effects of 
his doctrines : 

" Before God and man, said Cobham, " I so- 
lemnly here profess, that, till I knew Wiclif, 
whose judgment ye so highly disdam, I never 
abstained from sin ; but after I became acquaint- 
ed with that virtuous man and his despised doc- 
trines, it hath been otherwise with me : so much 
grace could I never find in all your pompous in- 
structions." 

In the beginning of Henry VI. 's reign, Wil- 
liam Taylor, of Bristol, gave evidence by his suf- 
ferings at the stake, that the Protestant leaven 
was still working, and that the Romish hatred 
of free inquiry on religious matters was growing 
fiercer and more intolerant. The crimes laid to 
the charge of this witness of the truth were, 
that he had asserted " that prayer is to be di- 
rected to God alone ; — that the saints are not to 
be worshipped or invoked; — and that to pray to 
any created being is to commit idolatry."* 

Besides these, there were simple-minded men 
of lower degree — peasants and mechanics, who, 
when they were plying the loom or the plough, 

*Fox, i.p. 605. 



FOREFATHERS. 61 

meditated deeply on the things of God, and who 
had their eyes providentially opened to see the 
absurdity of the legends that were told them; 
of the penances that were imposed on them ; 
of the false miracles that were played off upon 
them ; of the terrors of purgatory with which 
they were to be scared ; of the indulgences 
which were offered to them for money ; and who 
had their nerves braced to raise their voices 
against such monstrous fables out of the con- 
suming flames. \^'e owe much to these, as well 
as to the lordly Cobham, and to the learned 
theologians and students who interpreted God's 
Word faithfully, and died in attestation of it ; 
and we gratefully acknowledge that stones were 
brought to the Protestant fabric, and that the 
foundations of the noble temple, which has 
since reared its head to Heaven, were laid in 
part by the hands of workmen, whom the pha- 
risaic Papists would call " contemptible rustics 
and unlearned laymen." 

The civil wars between the adherents to the 
houses of York and Lancaster put some sort of 
stop to religious inquiry and religious persecution. 



62 OUR PROTESTANT 

Section 10.* — Protestantism gains strength be- 
fore Luther y and advances in spite of Henry VI 11. 

When the nation began to breathe after her 
pohtical bloodshed, fire and torture again pur- 
sued those who dared to think and act more 
freely than the Romish priesthood gave them 
permission. At Coventry, in the year 1519, six 
men and one woman were burnt for teaching 
their children the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and 
the Ten Commandments in the vulgar tongues. 
These examples are enough to prove to convic- 
tion, that long before the Spirit of the Lord came 
mightily upon Luther, and he arose like another 
Sampson to break the bands of Dalilah and the 
Philistines ; there were intrepid and faithful wit- 
nesses in other parts of the world, and especially 
in England, who were depositaries of the Truth 
till God was pleased to make it triumphant. 
Mr. Sharon Turner has well expressed this sen- 

* I trust that this Section, together with Section 13, will ex- 
pose the falsehood of Cobbett's statement in his " Legacy to 
Parsons," that the Church of England is a creature of the 
State forced upon the people. 



FOREFATHERS. g3 

timent in his ' History of England.' Speaking 
of Dean Colet, he says: — "We see a full re- 
formation of religious and moral truth accom- 
plished in his mind before the name of Luther 
had passed beyond his own threshold." Nay, 
Protestantism, so far from being a novelty before 
Luther, was transmitted to that chief among ten 
thousand, through one of the channels of which 
I have been speaking. It happened that, while 
Wiclif was in the full force of his career, a party 
of Bohemian barons arrived in England, and 
one of them carried home with him some of the 
writings of Wiclif. These fell into the hands of 
John Huss, who at once adopted and promulga- 
ted the opinions of the English Reformer.* 
Huss afterwards obtained more of the books of 
Wiclif, and industriously circulated them, so 
that when a search was made in Bohemia to 
destroy them, no less than two hundred were 
discovered. Luther, in his turn, admired and 
gave notoriety to the works of Huss. When 
he was studying at Erfurth, he found, in the 
library of the convent, a book entitled ' The 
Sermons of John Huss ;' and, according to his 

* iEneas Silvius, p. 66. 



64 OUR PROTESTANT 

own account, his astonishment at reading them 
was incredible: — "I could not comprehend," 
said he, " for what cause they burnt so great a 
man, who explained the Scripture with so much 
gravity and dexterity."* 

There is more reason to suppose that Luther 
trimmed his lamp with oil drawn from English 
vessels, than that English Protestants lighted 
their candle in Germany. One of our most re- 
nowned Reformers, Latimer, declared, on an oc- 
casion when his preaching excited much atten- 
tion, that he had not then read any of the works 
of Luther. He was asked by a bishop of Ely to 
deliver a sermon against Luther : " My Lord," 
replied Latimer, "I am not acquainted with the 
doctrine of Luther, nor are we permitted here to 
read his works ; and therefore it were a vain 
thing for me to refute his doctrine, not under- 
standing what he hath written, nor what opin- 
ion he holdeth. Sure I am that I have preached 
before you this day no man's doctrine, but only 
the doctrine of God out of the Scriptures : and 

* Luther's Preface to the Works of Huss, cited by Sharoa 
Turner, * History of England,' vol. v. p. 200. 



FOREFATHERS. 65 

if Luther be none otherwise than I have done, 
there needeth no confutation of his doctrine."* 

I will now, having disposed of the question 
*' Where was Protestantism before Luther?' 
add a few words more on the oft-repeated 
calumny, that the English Reformation was 
engendered in the mind of King Henry VIIL, 
and that this island never would have protested 
against Rome had it not been for that licentious 
and sanguinary tyrant, who, say the Romanists, 
renounced for himself and his kingdom all con- 
nexion with Rome, and invented a new religion, 
becavise the old one was too holy for him, and 
because the Pope refused to sanction his divorce 
of Catherine, and his marriage with Ann Bo- 
leyn. 

Henry VIIL certainly legahsed that which 
was before unlawful, according to the laws of 
the kingdom, — namely, resistance of Papal su- 
premacy ; but he never embraced the Scriptural 
doctrines of our pure religion, and he persecuted 
those who did. Prostestantism — I mean the re- 
ligious movement — owes much to Luther, for 
hastening the crisis in Germany, but little to 

* Strype'3 ' Ecclesiastical Memorials,' vol. iii. p. 370* 

6 



66 OUR PROTESTANT 

Henry, who retarded it in England. He may 
have given some impulse to the political engine 
that forced Popery from its commanding posi- 
tion in this country, but he did nothing to give 
food to the soul hungering after the bread of 
life ; he did nothing to promote a more spiritual 
system ; he struck down the Papal arm because 
it was raised against himself; but his own ty- 
ranny would have proved quite as destructive to 
the seeds of religious improvement, had he lived 
long enough to prosecute all his despotic objects. 
Men had begun to think seriously on matters of 
faith before his reign commenced : and the pro-, 
gress of free inquiry and of Scriptural knowledge 
advanced in spite of him. We have too long 
suffered the name of this bad man to press like 
an incubus upon the bosom of our rehgion ; let 
us throw off the weight, and cast it back to the 
Romanists, whose child he was. Bred up in 
their system, it was their cardinal, Wolsey, as 
his adviser, and with their Pope's license, as his 
warrant, that he first harboured the notion of 
seizing part of that Church property which they 
now bewail, and converting it to his own pur- 
poses. Encouraged also by former practices of 



.^A^ 



FOREFATHERS. 67 

the Romish Church, and knowing that the 
Popes had been in the habit of sanctioning di- 
vorces, and granting dispensations for the most 
revolting marriages, he hugged the burning coal 
of his hist to his heart, beheving that a Papal 
bull would enable him to keep it there. It is 
notorious in history that it was not a religious 
motive but a political one, which induced the 
Pope to refuse the boon which Henry solicited. 
Let the Romanists then take back their Henry 
VIII., whose act of the Six Articles stamps his 
Anti-Protestant character, and thank him for 
the attempts he made to stifle our religion, when 
it grew up faster than he liked. Praise be to 
Him that dwelleth in Heaven, and who laughs 
to scorn the kings of the earth and the rulers 
that take counsel against his Word, the force of 
truth was too strong even for the most powerful 
and arbitrary of our monarchs, and all his might 
could not suppress it. Protestantism was by his 
time firmly taking root downward, and bearing 
fruit upward. Its influence was felt in the 
Church, Romish as it then was ; in the universi- 
ties ; in the castellated mansions of the great ; in 
the houses of the citizens ; and in the cottages of 



68 <^UR PROTESTANT 

the peasantry, long before Henry cast his adulter- 
ous eye on Ann Boleyn, or thought of quarrelling 
with the Bishop of Rome. It was Wiclif, the rec- 
tor of Lutterworth, the university professor, the 
country clergyman, and other humble teachers 
like himself, who, by their writings, and their 
preaching, and their example, and not the despotic 
King, with his fierce decrees, who dispelled the 
clouds of ignorance, and opened the way to the 
fountains of eternal life. Henry's hostility was 
only directed against a power which thwarted 
his own : theirs, arising out of a principle of 
faith, and founded on Scripture, was against the 
images, and the masses, and the indulgences, 
and the false miracles, and the many interces- 
sors, robbing Christ of his glory of being the 
only One, and the blandishment of Popery, 
which were all injurious to the soul's hope of 
immortality. 

Theirs was the merit of having conduced to a 
sense of personal responsibility in matters of reli- 
gion, to the rejection of all imaginary help from 
the meritorious offerings of saints, and to a de- 
pendence on the atonement and intercession and 
justification of Jesus Christ alone, which consti- 



FOREFATHERS. 69 

tutes the main difference between the devout 
Romanist and the devout Protestant. And the 
spirit of Protestantism, when once evoked, was 
a determined and a moving* spirit : it was not to 
be put down or to be confined. If it was not 
received in one place, it would go to another ; 
and wherever it was received, there it abided. 
Thus it abided in the valleys of Piedmont ; in 
the Alpine fastnesses of France, Switzerland, 
and Italy ; in the forests of Bohemia ; and in 
the vales and homes of Britain. Henry VIII. 
had nothing to do with the origin, and little 
with the advance of spiritual Protestantism. 

Section 11. — The Bible, in the vernacular tongue^ 
becomes an engine of wonderful power in the hands 
of the Protestants. 

In this section I must endeavour to show that 
it was the study of the Scriptures, and the op- 
portunities offered to the people of becoming ac- 
quainted with the Word of God in their own 
tongue, which brought Protestantism to its ma- 
turity and full strength in this country as well 
as in others. 

6* 



70 OUR PROTESTANT 

^^ The new translation," as Dr. Lingard testi- 
fies of Wiclif 's Bible, " became an engine of 
wonderful power ;" and that is why the Romish 
clergy hate every translation of the Bible into 
the vulgar tongue, because it is an " engine of 
wonderful power." It is one before which the 
Church of Rome never can stand : she has 
therefore always been averse from the free use 
of it ; and her abhorrence of it is the reason why 
we ought the more closely to imitate the wisdom 
of our Protestant forefathers, and to ply it in 
every corner of the land. But we, of the pre- 
sent day, are not as earnest as they were in em- 
ploying the only weapon against which the ar- 
mour of Rome is not proof. Whether it is that 
the very facilities which we enjoy of working 
this engine have rendered some of us careless 
and lukewarm, or that the wiles of our adversa- 
ries have persuaded us that it is illiberal and un- 
fair to carry this warfare into their camp, cer- 
tain I am that we are ceasing to fight them, as 
we should, with our strongest arm. If, before 
the art of printing was invented, ' manuscript 
copies of Scripture, difl&cult to read, and expen- 
sive to purchase, were found to be the surest 



FOREFATHERS. 71 

liberators from religious tyranny and corruption, 
what an extraordinary accession of power might 
now be put forth, when the press can multiply 
numbers of the Bible without end, and render 
the perusal of them perfectly easy ! The in- 
crease of Protestants was slow before printed 
books were in circulation, but it was rapid be- 
yond all calculation as soon as this new accelerat- 
ing force was applied ; and this accounts for the 
sudden appearance of hosts of declared seceders 
from the Romish Church in all parts of Europe, 
before the middle of the sixteenth century. 

We trace the simultaneous movement to the 
same cause — to the circulation of printed copies 
of Scripture in the vernacular languages of Ger- 
many, France, and England. It is a most ex- 
traordinary fact, and points to the directing hand 
of Providence, that just about the same time 
three new translations of Scripture appeared 
among the principal nations of Europe; viz. 
Martin Luther's New Testament in German, 
1522; the Waldensian Olivetan's Bible in 
French, 1535 ; and Miles Coverdale's Bible in 
EngUsh, in 1535. The effect was almost mi- 
raculous : people's eyes were opened to the 



72 OUR PROTESTANT 

truth ; and the Romish clergy, knowing that 
the utmost subtleties of human reasoning can- 
not be successful against Holy Writ, have ever 
since done all they could to restrict the use of it. 
They cannot in these days openly denounce the 
reading of Scripture ; therefore they pretend to 
call our translations erroneous, and on that 
ground to dissuade from the use of them. But 
why does not the Infallible Church give vernacu- 
lar translations of her own, and pronounce them 
to be correct interpretations of God's revealed 
will '? She affirms that she holds the keys of 
knowledge and revelation : then why does she 
not unlock the clasps which she has put on the 
treasures of Scriptural knowledge, and relieve 
herself of the respojisibility of being the deposi- 
tory of the Oracles of God, and of refusing to 
speak from the tripod ? 

In the creed of Pope Pius, which I have be- 
fore cited, she makes her children swear that 
they v/ill receive no interpretation but hers ; 
and yet she withholds an interpretation which 
may be equally accessible to all, and suffers her 
priests to deal out by piecemeal whatever ex- 



FOREFATHERS. 73 

planation they may choose to put on the written 
Word. 

The following anecdote will illustrate her in- 
consistency and weakness on this point. In 
1825, a Roman Catholic Bishop (Dr. Doyle) 
was examined before a committee of the House 
of Lords. He was asked, " Have you in any 
instance allowed the circulation of the Bible 
among the laity without notes]" Dr. Doyle 
answered^ " I do not know that we have.'' In 
reply to a previous question. Dr. Doyle had said, 
" The notes carry in our edition of the Bible no 
weight, for we do not know the writers of many 
of them." 

Section 12. — Cranmer—The first authorised Eng- 
lish Version of the Bihle^ and the PeopWs re- 
ception of it. 

When Cranmer and the fathers of the Re- 
formed Church in England saw that the time 
was come to make new efforts, and to engage 
the body of the people on their side, they re- 
solved to make that a national concern which 
had hitherto been the work of individuais^ — 



74 OUR PROTESTANT 

namely, the diffusion of Gospel truths ; and 
they agreed that an authorised English version 
of the Scriptures should be their first object. 
But see what difficulties they had to encounter. 

So late as the year 1519, as I have mention- 
ed before, six men and a woman had been burnt, 
for only teaching so small a portion of Scripture 
as the Lord's prayer and ten commandments in 
the vulgar tongue. The King, Henry VIII5 
Avas so little inclined to favour their views, that 
he had written a book against Luther, the Pro- 
testant champion in Germany, and had issued 
proclamations against Tyndal's English transla- 
tion of the New Testament, published in 1526, 
declaring that the possession of the book after 
thirty days would expose the person convicted 
of having it to the penalty of heresy — the 
flames/'^ 

All the copies that could be found of TyndaPs 
Testament had been burnt in Cheapside, as if 

* An old man named Thomas Harding, of Buckingham- 
shire, was observed to go into the woods, and was seen there 
reading. This gave rise to suspicion : his house was searched* 
and a New Testament was found : the man was burnt alive, 
and all who carried a fagot to his stake had an indulgence of 
forty days granted to them. 



FOREFATHERS. 75 

the Romanists were determined to avow that 
there was a vast contrariety between their doc- 
trines and those of Scripture. But their ani- 
mosity did not stop here: in 1530 a public no- 
tice announced that the King and his bishops 
did not think any Enghsh version of Scripture 
was wanted. Patiently, therefore, were the 
friends of Scripture-reading obliged to V\^atch 
their opportunities before they could openly put 
their intention in execution. While Wolsey 
lived, there was no hope of any public recogni- 
tion of the duty of putting English translations 
of the Bible into the hands of the people. That 
Cardinal Archbishop, who held by Papal dispen- 
sation the revenues of four bishcorics^^ atone 
time, hated even the ait of print' ng, because, 
said he, "it will bring down the honour of the 
priesthood, by making the people as wise as 
they." But the work of preparation was going 
on in the hearts and in the secret chambers of 
the more faithful soldiers of the Cross. Cran- 
mer was studiously qualifying himself to fight 
the battle of truth : he kept large folio volumes 

* Some shoit time ago it was stated in Parliament that plu- 
ralities were first held by the Protestant clergy ! 



76 OUR PROTESTANT 

> 

for Dotes, in which he marked down the best of 
the various interpretations and comments on 
Scripture, whicli he had read in the Fathers and 
eminent theologians of the Church ; and when 
the season appointed for the great crisis arrived, 
he was ready with his arguments for the pubU- 
cation of a revised translation. These he plead- 
ed with so much force before the Convocation of 
his province, in December, 1534, that it was 
agreed to petition the King to grant a commis- 
sion to provide an amended translation of the 
Bible in the English tongue. Henry comphed, 
and on the 4th of October, 1536, Coverdale's 
version (which when revised was afterwards 
called Cranmer's Bible) was published in folio, 
to the great joy of the people, and to the confu- 
sion of the Romanists; one of whom, Bishop 
Stokesly, w^as heard to declare, " I wonder that 
Cranmer should thus abuse the people, in giving 
them liberty to read the Scriptures, which does 
nothing else but infect them with heresy." 

There are a few anecdotes relating to the 
publication of this first authorised translation of 
the Bible, which a,re well worth recording, as 
demonstrative of the temper in which our an- 






FOREFATHERS. 77 

cestors received the blessing, and the use they 
made of it: A command was issued that every 
Church should be provided with one of these 
foUo Bibles. It was done ; but the anxiety of 
the people, of such as could, to read the pre- 
cious volume, and of such as could not, to han- 
dle and turn over the pages of that book, which 
they had been in the habit of regarding as a 
thing of mystery and prohibition, was so great, 
that it was found necessary to chain them for 
security to the desks. In a country church I 
have seen the very Bible and the very chain 
preserved as relics, which three hundred years 
ago attested the popular feeling on this subject. 
But so deeply rooted were the old prejudices of 
the governing authorities, that it was four years 
after the Bible was placed in the churches, be- 
fore the King could be persuaded to revoke the 
decrees which forbade his subjects to have it in 
their private possession. At last they were gra- 
tiously permitted by royal license to purchase Bi- 
bles for their own reading at home. Then it 
was that every body who could afford it bought 
a copy of the Scriptures : such as could not buy 
the whole, purchased detached passages^ A 
7 



78 OUR PROTESTANT 

cart-load of hay was known to be given for a 
few chapters of St. Paul's Epistles. And many- 
there were, who, having learned to read in their 
old age, that they might have the pleasm'e of 
poring over the written Word, and reading with 
their own eyes the wonderful things of God, ex- 
claimed with the prophet, ^' Thy words were 
found, and I did eat them ; and thy Avord was 
unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." 
The crosses and public places often presented 
the moving sight of men, women, and children, 
crowding round a reader who was rehearsing 
the songs of Zion, and the prophecies of the 
seers of Israel, or the tender discourses of the 
Redeemer of mankind. 

One poor man, named John Marbeck, was so 
desirous of making himself the master of a Bi- 
ble, that he determined to write one out, because 
he had not money enough to buy one ; and 
when he had accomphshed that laborious task, 
he set about the still more trying toil of making 
a Concordance. 

" They would hide the forbidden treasure tin- 
der the floors of their houses," says Mr. Blunt, 
in his admirable ' Sketch of the Reformation,' 



FOREFATHERS. 79 

which every body should read, " and put their 
lives in peril, rather than forego the book they 
desired ; they would sit up all night, their doors 
being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hear^ 
ing others read the Word of God ; they would 
bury themselves in the woods, and there con- 
verse with it in solitude ; they would tend their 
herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for 
drinking in the good tidings of great joy." 

Such being the avidity with which the Scrip- 
tures were cherished, let the reader imagine the 
consternation which overwhelmed the pious of 
this country, when the capricious Henry rever- 
sed his former decrees in favour of biblical learn- 
ing, and threatened his people with imprison- 
ment, confiscation, and fire, if any, below the 
privileged classes, should presumeito search the 
Scriptures. This terrible stretch of royal pre- 
rogative was confirmed by Act of Parliament, in 
1543; and it seemed like a seal of human folly 
and infatuation, forced upon a tyrant king and 
a subservient senate, to refute future calumnies 
against Protestantism, and to be handed down 
to posterity as proof most positive that the Re- 
formation was carried on, not by the cold me- 



80 OUR PROTESTANT 

• 
chanism of State politics, but by the fervent zeal 

and undaunted devotion of holy men, in spite of 
kings and parliaments. Our Protestant forefa- 
thers would have been crushed, and their names 
and their labours clean-forgotten, if the will of some 
of their temporal and spiritual rulers could have 
been accomplished. The proclamation of 1543 
set forth that "No books were to be printed 
about religion without the King's consent ; none 
might read the Scripture in any open assembly, 
or expound it, but he who was licensed by the 
King or his ordinary. Every nobleman or gentle^ 
man might cause the Bible to be read to him in 
or about his house. Every merchant who was 
a housekeeper, might also read it ; but no wo- 
man, no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, 
serving-men under the degree of yeoman, and 
no husbandman, nor labourer, might read it." 

Such were the struggles of Protestantism ! 
Nearly two hundred years after Wiclif 's transla- 
tion first appeared, even after the authorized ver- 
sion was published and freely circulated, the 
King, who is falsely described by our opponents 
as the nursing father of our faith, strove, by 
every means with which absolute power invest- 



r 



FOREFATHERS. 81 

ed^him, to stifle the infant religion, which he i$ 
said to have engendered. 

There is a curious document still in existence, 
which sliows what was felt by the humble and 
lowly Christians of that day, who were thought 
too degraded in intellect to be permitted to read 
the Bible. It is in the form of a note made by 
a shepherd in the spare leaf of a book, which he 
bought after the passing of the Act above refer- 
red to: — At Oxford, in the year 1546, brought 
down to Scynbury by John Darly, price lid. 
When I kept Mr. Letymer's sheep, I bought this 
book, when the Testament was abrogated, that 
shepherds might not read it. I pray God amend 
that bhndness. Writ by Robert Williams, keep- 
ing sheep upoDjficynbury Hill, 1546." ^^ 

In the midst of the storms which were raised 
against Protestants, at different periods of Hen- 
ry's reign, it is a marvel how Cranmer, even 
after he was made archbishop, escaped Henry's 
wrath. 

He was in a high place, and could not be un- 
observed. He certainly owed his safety to that 
extraordinary inconsistency and fitfulness of the 
King, who persecuted Protestants and Roman- 
7* 



n 



82 OUR PROTESTANT 

ists as the humour seized him — who hked to 
day what he hated yesterday, and whom a wit- 
ticism or a ready saying would frequently divert 
from his most violent purposes. A remarkable 
instance of this caprice, and a proof that the 
highest station was no protection against King 
Henry's hatred of heresy, and jealousy of those 
who were Protestants beyond his Protestantism, 
is to be found in the well-known anecdote of 
Queen Catharine Parr, Henry's last wife. He 
had determined to bring her to trial for her 
opinions — for having discussed religious ques- 
tions too freely with himself. Articles of accu- 
sation were drawn up, and the Chancellor was 
at the door with the guard who were to arrest 
the Queen — when happily shejiold her husband 
that she had carried her disputations to an ex- 
treme point, to draw him into discourse and to 
excite his interest. " Is it so ?" said the king, 
" then we are friends again ;" and the Chancel- 
lor was indignantly driven from the presence, 
with cuffs and kicks from the royal hand and 
foot, for his officious meddling. 



FOREFATHERS. 83 

Section 13. — The Protestant Cause triumphs^ by 
virtue of its own principles^ rather than by the 
aid of the ruling powers. 

These statements will satisfy you that Pro- 
testanism, in the right sense of the word, had 
but little help from the government of the coun- 
try, until the reign of Edward VI. ; and that 
the contest between it and Romanism in every 
other respect, except the Pope's supremacy, was 
carried on in the face of adverse rulers, by the 
pious few. The dissolute manners of the Ro- 
mish clergy had excited the disgust of the peo- 
ple : the fires which were kindled in every quar- 
ter, to consume those who ventured to differ 
from the religion of the State, made that reli- 
gion more and more odious to them : the attempts 
to deprive them of the Scriptures assured them 
that Romanism and the Word of God were at 
variance — else why such pains to keep them in 
ignorance of it ? — and the reading and hearing 
Scripture, as occasion offered, confirmed them in 
their suspicions that the practices and the pre- 
tensions of the Church of Rome could not bear 



84 OUR PROTESTANT 

the test of the Gospel. Having learnt what 
W3,s right, the people determined to practise it, 
and without waiting for any order from an Ec- 
clesiastical Court or a Minister of State, the pa- 
rochial authorities began to pull down the images 
of saints which were erected in the churches, 
and to efface the pictures painted on the walls, 
substituting texts of Scripture in the place of 
the latter. Henry VIII.'s mandate for the re:, 
moval of superstitious objects amounted to no- 
thing—for who dared to determine what were 
superstitious ? The minister and churchwardens 
of a parish in London led the way, by clearing 
their church of every thing that was in viola- 
tion of the Second Commandment ; and Ridley, 
afterwards Bishop of London, had the honour of 
preaching a sermon which " raised a great heat 
over England." Hitherto the government of 
Edward VL was silent and passive on this sub- 
ject; and even then, the first injunctions which 
were published only cautiously directed that 
" such images as the curates knew were abused 
by pilgrimages or offerings to them, should be 
taken down." The Protector's letter for the 
entire removal of images did not come until it 
w^as demanded by public opinion. 



f 



FOREFATHERS. 85 

Men's mindsj enlightened by degrees, could 
no longer tolerate the impiety of such images — 
for instance, as that which was meant to repre- 
sent the Holy Trinity. It depictured the Father 
Eternal as an old man, with a triple crown, and 
rays about his head, — the Son as a young man 
with a crown and rays, — and the Holy Ghost as 
a dove sitting over their heads : to complete the 
profanation, the Virgin was placed between the 
Father and the Son, in conformity with the doc- 
trine of the Assumption. 

Thus slowly did the State permit the with- 
drawing of offensive objects from the eyes of the 
religious. In like manner the Acts of Parha- 
ment, relating to the administration of the Sa- 
crament of the Lord's Supper, and the abolition 
of private masses, were not passed until the 
pulpits had long resounded with exposures of the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. 

The Communion Bill was not agreed to until 
20th December, 1547. It was twelve months 
more before the ritual and public services were 
weeded of their most unscriptural and fabulous 
deformities ; and the entire reformation of the 
Church ceremonies cannot be said to have been 



86 OUR PROTESTANT 

effected till many years after the complaints of 
the devout and the reflecting had been loudly 
uttered in the ears of their rulers. The autho- 
rities seemed still inclined to check rather than 
hasten the march of improvement. A procla- 
mation against those who ^^ innovated and per- 
suaded from the old accustomed rites^^ was issued 
even in King Edward's reign : in fact, every 
jemoval of yokes too heavy to bear proceeded 
with equal slowness and dehberation. The 
clergy themselves took the liberty to marry before 
the Acts of Parliament, in 1548 and 1552, were 
passed for their relief, and legahzed their mar- 
riages. These things show that the separation of 
the people of England from the Church of Rome, 
and the renouncement of her religious practices 
and impositions, did not emanate with the gov- 
ernment either of Henry VIII., or of his succes- 
ors Edward and Elizabeth, but that they origi- 
nated in the Protestant principles which kept 
gaining strength from year to year, as tluey were 
more universally promulgated and better ex- 
pounded. It was a little spark and a gradual 
ignition, and not a sudden conflagration raised 
by another Nero, which lighted up among the 



r 



FOREFATHERS. §7 



people of this realm, and consumed the fabrics 
of Rome. The old constructions, which it had 
taken a thousand years to build up, could not 
be demolished at once, and we behold the hand 
of God in the retardation of this religious move- 
ment ; for if our cause is now weakened in the 
eyes of the inconsiderate, and we are now taunt- 
ed with the reproach that it was kingly tyranny 
which made Protestants of our forefathers, what 
would have been the effect of the argument had 
there really been the slightest truth in the asser- 
tion ? Thanks be to the Most High, the con- 
viction came first, and the law afterwards. The 
rejection of Romanism was not legalized till 
thousands of books had been written, printed, 
and circulated against its delusions; till thou- 
sands of sermons had been heard and preached 
against its errors, and till the suffrages of men 
were collected in favour of a restitution of the 
primitive doctrines of the Gospel. " If," said a 
sober-minded reasoner on this subject, "amidst 
BO much that is admirable in the character and 
conduct of the first Reformers, we might be 
permitted to allot the meed of praise to any par- 
ticular part, I should have no hesitation in as- 



88 OUR PROTESTANT 

signing it to that singular moderation and dis- 
cernment which distinguished the Reformation 
from all other revolutions, which overcoming the 
common infirmities of our nature, by which men 
are apt to run from one extreme into its opposite, 
controlled the spirit of innovation in the mo- 
ment of reform ; rejected nothing without ex- 
amination ; retained nothing without authority; 
and when it abjured the usurpations of the 
Church of Rome, discarded only its corruptions, 
and left all that had the stamp of Christianity 
behind, — ^like the fire which separates and con- 
sumes the dross, but preserves and refines all that 
is pure in the ore."* 

The active struggle in this country may be 
said to have commenced about the year 1360, 
when Wiclif first began to lecture and to preach 
against the clergy of Rome, and to have achiev- 
ed its object the year after Elizabeth's accession 
— say 1560. For two hundred years, therefore, 
our Protestant forefathers were publicly contend- 
ing and suffering, before the kingdom experienced 
the full benefit of their devoted efforts. During the 

* Taylor's " Answer to the duestion. Why are you a 
Churchman ?" 



FOREFATHERS. 89 

last fifty years of the contest, from the beginning 
of Henry's reign in 1509, to the termination of 
Mary's in 1559, the perseverance, the learning, 
the dihgence, the piety, and the intrepidity of 
those faithful servants of God, were fully mani- 
fested in patience and tribulation. At one time 
they had to bear the reproaches of those among 
whom they lived, and the spoiling of their goods, 
and bonds and imprisonments, and cruel mock- 
ings. At another time they wandered in deserts 
and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the 
earth ; and oftentimes, when they thought that 
their work was done, and that they had triumph- 
ed over prejudices and false reasoning, and ma- 
lignant opposition, and tyrannical power, they 
had to fight the battle over again, and to submit 
to new trials, disappointments, and sufferings. 
Ah ! little do we think at what a sacrifice of all 
which is dear to man, our fathers and forerunners 
in the faith bought for us the privileges which 
we now enjoy, and enabled us freely to discuss 
the sacred subjects, which they could not whis- 
per to themselves but at the jeopardy of their 
lives. Take the example of Cranmer only, 
whom, much as we admire, we do not profess to 
8 



90 OUR PROTESTANT 

call perfect in his generation. Every bitter 
drug which man can take, he had to swallow : 
he was perpetually in peril of his life : when he 
stood before Henry VIII. , the sAVord hung by a 
thread over his head, even in his momenta of 
greatest favour. He had first to reason himself 
out of long-cherished opinions ; he had then to 
contest the point with his own order. He had 
patiently to watch his seasons and opportunities: 
he had to see himself dashed from the pinnacle 
of his hopes, at the moment when he thought 
he had reached it. He had to bear the blame 
of severities inflicted on those whom he knew to 
be undeserving of them, but which he could not 
avert. He had to do things from which his 
heart revolted ; and he expired in tortures at the 
stake — a penitent and a martyr, with his mind 
agonized by a sense of his own defects, and his 
body slowly burning in the flames, — so slowly, 
that he watched over, and even exulted in the 
consumption of that right hand of his, which 
had offended him by signing an act of recanta-* 
tion in an hour of weakness. Oh, call to re-» 
membrance the former days, in which, after 
your Protestant fathers were illuminated^ they 



FOREFATHERS. 91 

endured a great fight of afflictions, and pray that 
you may have strength and grace to persevere 
in the Holy Faith which they bequeathed to 
you. 

Section 14.> Anecdotes illustrative of the charac- 
ter, doctrines, and conduct of our Protestant lu- 
minaries — Wiclif Cranmer, Latimer^ Jewels 
Rowland Taylor, Bernard Gilpin. 

When Wichf was attacked by an alarming 
sickness, brought on by his incessant labour and 
anxiety in defence of the truth, his adversaries 
thought it a favourable opportunity to endeavour 
to wTing from his supposed weakness that which 
they knew it to be impossible to extort from him 
in his more calm and collected hour. An em- 
bassy of the mendicant order, begging friars, 
was deputed to intrude themselves into his 
chamber, and some of the authorities of the day 
lent their countenance and their presence to the 
same ungenerous attempt to bully and intimidate 
the man whose last moments they hoped were 
approaching. They found him stretched upon 
his bed, faint and in anguish. Thev surrounded 



92 OUR PROTESTANT 

his pallet; some preached, some threatened, 
and all invoked him by the powers of earth and 
hell to recant all that he had^ said or written 
against them, inasmuch as he had but a short 
time to live. The recumbent saint heard them 
in silence, until they had uttered all that they 
had to say : he then requested to be raised up 
on his pillowsj and, gathering up his strength, 
he exclaimed, with a firm voice, " I shall not die 
but live, and again declare the works of the 
Lord, and protest against your evil deeds." 

His words were Heaven-inspired, and pro- 
phetically true : his health was restored, and 
Wiclif was spared many years to uphold the 
sacred cause of which he was the champion, 
and to tear the mask from hypocrisy and infi- 
delity. 

While Cranmer was in prosperity, he had 
so much of the milk of human kindness, and of 
Christian forgiveness in his disposition, that it 
was said of him, — " The surest way to secure 
the good offices of the archbishop is to do him 
some notable displeasure." His house was the 
asylum, not of the learned and distinguished 
stranger only, but of many of the poor and the 



FOREFATHERS. 93 

distressed. On one occasion it was converted 
into an hospital for sick and wounded soldiers, 
who were returning home from France through 
Kent. He kept a surgeon and physician to at- 
tend them ; and when they were well enough 
to depart, he furnished them with money for 
their journey. At the very summit of his gran- 
deur, his habits of study were the same as those 
which distinguished him in humble life. He 
usually rose at five, and devoted the first four 
hours of the day to his books, his compositions, 
or his devotions ; the three next were set apart 
for public business* He dined at twelve, return* 
ed to his literary labours at five, and, with a 
short interval of recreation, continued at them 
till his hour of rest for the night. By these 
regular habits, his accumulations of knowledge 
were so great, that it was diflScult to propose 
any question to him out of Scripture, general 
theology, or canon law, which he could not an- 
swer ; and he was always able to support his 
opinions by reference to the best authorities. 

The great extent of his learning, and the 
acuteness of his reasoning, were made so mani- 
fest at his trial, when he was arraigned before 
8* 



^w 



94 OUR PROTESTANT 

the tribunal which condemned him, that his 
judges were constrained to silence him. " If 
you will adduce a proof of the corporeal pre- 
sence in the Eucharist, out of any one divine 
who lived within a thousand years of our Sa- 
viour's resurrection," said Cranmer, " I will con- 
sent to the Romish doctrine." — " We come to 
examine you, and not to permit you to examine 
us," was the answer ; which evaded, but could 
not refute his argument. 

When sentence of degradation and excommu- 
nication was passed upon him, he was delivered 
over to the secular arm, with this cruel mockery 
of mercy and justice : — " And w^e beseech Her 
Majesty, with all the affection possible, by the 
love of God, and by our regard for piety and 
mercy, and by the intervention of our prayers, 
not to bring upon this wretched man any peril of 
dismemberment or death." 

Extracts from a Letter ^ written by a Roman Catho^ 
lic^ who was a witness of Cranmer^s Martyrdom. 

" On Saturday last, being the 21st of March, 
was his day appointed to die : and, because the 



FOREFATHERS. 95 

morning' was much rainy, the sermon appointed 
by Dr. Cole, to be made at the stake, was made 
in St. Mary's Church ; where was prepared, 
over against the pulpit, an high place for him, 
that all the people might see him. And, when 
he had ascended it, he kneeled down and prayed, 
weeping tenderly, which moved a great number 
to tears that had conceived an assured hope of 
his conversion and repentance. ***** 

" When Dr. Cole had ended his sermon, he 
desired all the people to pray for him — Mr. 
Cranmer kneeling down with them, and praying 
for himself. I think there was never such a 
number so earnestly praying together ; for they 
that hated him before, now loved him for his 
conversion, and hope of continuance. They 
that loved him before could not so suddenly hate 
him, having hope of his confession again of his 
fall. ************ 

" So love and hope increased devotion on 
every side. I shall not need, for the time of 
sermon, to describe his behaviour, his sorrowful 
countenance, his heavy cheer, his face bedewed 
with tears ; sometimes casting them down to 
the earth for shame — to be brief, an image of 



96 OUR PROTESTANT 

sorrow ; the dolour of his heart bursting out at 
his eyes in plenty of tears ; retaining ever a 
quiet, grave behaviour, which increased the pity 
in men's hearts, that they unfeignedly loved 
him, hoping it had been his repentance for his 
transgression and error. I shall not need, I say, 
to point it out unto you ; you can much better 
imagine it yourself. 

" When praying was done, he stood up, and, 
having leave to speak, said, ' Good people, I had 
intended indeed to desire you to pray for me. * 
And now will I pray for myself, as I could best 
devise for mine own comfort, and say the prayer 
word for word, as I have here written down,' — 
And he read it standing; and then kneeled 
down, and said the Lord's Prayer ; and all the 
people on their knees devoutly praying with 
him. 

"His prayer was thus : ' O Father of Heaven ; 
O Son of God, Redeemer of the World ; O Holy 
Ghost, proceeding from them both, three Persons 
and one God, have mercy upon me, most wretch- 
ed caitiff and miserable sinner. I who have 
offended both Heaven and earth, and more 
grievously than any tongue can express, whither 



r 



FOREFATHERS. 97 

then may I go, or whither should I fly for suc- 
cour ? To Heaven I may be ashamed to hft up 
mine eyes ; and in earth I find no refuge. 
What shall I then do ? Shall I despair ? God 
forbid ! O good God, thou art merciful, and 
refusest none that come unto Thee for succour. 
" ' To thee therefore do I run. To thee do I 
humble myself, saying, O Lord God, my sins be 
great, but yet have mercy upon me for thy mercy. 
O God the Son, thou wast not made man : this 
great mystery was not wrought for few or small 
offences, nor thou didst not give thy Son unto 
death, O God the Father, for our little and small 
sins only, but for all the greatest sins of the 
world, so that the sinner return unto thee with 
a penitent heart, as I do here at this present. 
Wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, whose 
property is always to have mercy : for although 
my sins be great, yet thy mercy is greater. I 
crave nothing, O Lord, for mine own merits, 
but for thy name's sake, that it may be glorified 
thereby, and for thy dear Son Jesus Christ's 
sake. And now therefore. Our Father, which 
art in Heaven, &c. &c.' ****** 
Then rising, he said, ^ Every man desireth, 



<( 



98 OUR PROTESTANT 

good people, at the time of their deaths, to give 
some good exhortation, that others may remem- 
ber after their deaths, and be the better thereby. 
So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may 
speak something at this my departing, whereby 
God may be glorified, and you edified. * * 
And now I come to the great thing that troubleth 
my conscience more than any other thing that 
ever I said or did in my life — and that is the set- 
ting abroad of writings contrary to the truth 
[alluding to his recantation.] * * * * * 
And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing 
contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall 
first be punished ; for if I may come to the fire, 
it shall be first burned.' ****** 

** Coming to the stake with a cheerful coun- 
tenance and willing mind, he put off his gar- 
ments with haste, and stood upright in his shirt : 
and a bachelor of divinity, named Elye, of Bra- 
zen-nose College, laboured to convert him to his 
former recantation, with the two Spanish friars. 

"And the bishop answered, (showing his 
hand,) ^This is the hand that wrote it, and 
therefore shall it suffer first punishment.' 

" Fire being now put to him, he stretched out 



FOREFATHERS. 99 

his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and 
held it there a good space, before the fire came 
to any other part of his body ; where his hand 
was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying 
with a loud voice, 'This hand hath offended.' 
As soon as the fire got up, he was very soon 
dead, never stirring or crying all the while. 

" His patience in the torment, his courage in 
dying, if it had been taken either for the Glory 
of God, the wealth of his country, or the testi- 
mony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error 
and subversion of true religion, I could worthily 
have commended the example, and matched it 
with the fame of any father of ancient time 5 
but, seeing that not the death, but the cause 
and quarrel thereof, commendeth the sufferer, I 
cannot but much dispraise his obstinate stub- 
bornness and sturdiness in dying, and specially in 
so evil a cause. Surely hi^ death much grieved 
every man ; but not after one sort. Some pitied 
to see his body so tormented with the fire raging 
upon the silly carcass, that counted not of the 
folly: others, that passed not much of the body, 
lamented to see him spill his soul, wretchedly, 
without redemption, to be plagued for ever. His 



100 OUR PROTESTANT 

friends sorrowed for love ; his enemies for pity ; 
strangers for a common kind of humanity, where- 
by we are bound one to another. Thus I have 
enforced myself, for your sake, to discourse this 
heavy narration. Contrary to my mind, and, 
being more than half weary, I make a short end, 
wishing you a quieter life, with less honour, and 
easier death, with your praise, the 23d of March. 
Yours, J. A."* 

Latimer was one of the earliest and most 
determined opponents of Romanism during the 
most perilous times of the reign of Henry VIII. 
In his Sermons of the Card, as they were called, 
which he preached at Cambridge, in 1529, he 
began to declare his opinions. The preachers 
of that day used to select some pastime or topic 
of the season, on which they would construct 
their discourses. At Christmas, Latimer fixed 
on cards as his subject; he would take the heart, 
he said, for his trump, and teach his hearers to 
serve Grod with their heart, and not to rely on 
external and unfruitful ceremonies. After some 
explanatory observations, he proceeded: — "Now 
I trust you know what your card means : let us 

* Memorial of Cranmer, Strype, vol. i. b. iii. p. 552. 



FOREFATHERS. 101 

see how we can play with the same. Whenso- 
ever you go and make your oblation to God, ask 
of yourselves this question, Who art thou ? The 
answer, as you know, is, I am a Christian man ! 
Then you must again ask of yourselves, what 
Christ requires of a Christian man ? Christ 
will not accept our oblation if it be of another 
man's substance ; [in allusion to the Popish 
doctrine of the meritorious works, offerings, and 
intercession of the saints,] it must be our own.'' 
In his sermon on the Ploughy which was deliver- 
ed in London some years afterwards, he express- 
ed himself much more boldly and plainly. 
^^ There is one," he exclaimed, "who is the 
most diligent prelate and preacher in all Eng- 
land : it is the devil. He is never out of his 
diocese, and never from his cure : he is ever in 
his parish ; he keeps residence at all times ; he 
is ever at his plough ; and his office is to hinder 
religion, to set up idolatry, to teach all manner 
of Popery. He is ready enough to put forth his 
plough, to devise as many means as can be to 
deface and obscure God's gloiy. Where his 
plough is going, away with books, and up with 
candles ; away with Bibles, and up with beads ; 
9 



102 OUR PROTESTANT 

away with the light of the Gospel, and up with 
the light of candles—ryea, at noon-day. Where 
he, the deyil, is resident, up with superstition 
and idolatry^ censing, painting of images, ashes, 
holy water, and new services of marfs invent- 
ing ; as though man could invent a better way 
to honour Qod than God himself hath .appoint- 
ed. Away with clothing the naked, the poor, 
and the impotent ; up with decking of ii^ages, 
and gay garnishing of stocks and stones. Up 
with man's traditions; down with God's tradi- 
tions and his most holy Word. And all things 
must be done in Latin ; there must be nothing 
but Latin : God's Word may in nowise fee trans- 
lated into English." 

When King Henry issued a proclamation for- 
bidding the use of the Scriptures, Latimer shrunk 
mot from the path of his duty, dangerous as it 
was, but addressed a letter of remonstrance to 
the angry monarch, in which he reminded him 
that those who had recommended him " to make 
it treason for any to have the Scripture in Eng- 
lish, were they who bliijded his people with their 
customs, and their ceremonies, and their glosses,^ 
and punished them with cursings, excommunir 



FOREFATHERS. 103 

cations, and other corruptions. Therefore, may- 
it please your Grace, to return to the golden rule 
of our Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ, which 
is this, * by their fruits ye shall know them.' 
They that persecute are void,- and wholly with- 
out truth ; not caring for the clear light, which 
is come into the world, and which shall show 
forth every man's workg : and they^ whose works 
are naught dare not come to this light, but go 
about to stop it and hinder itj hindering as 
much as they may the Holy Scripiture from 
being read in our mother tongue : saying it 
would cause heresy and insurrection; and so 
they persuade, at least they would fain persuade, 
your Grace to keep it back. And as concerning 
your last proclamation, prohibiting such books, 
the very chief counsellers of it were those whose 
evil living and choked hypocrisy those books 
disclosed. And as touching the men who were 
lately punished for these books, there is no man 
that can lay any word or deed against them, 
that should sound to the breaking any of your 
Grace's laws ; this only excepted, if it be yours, 
and not rather theirs. Wherefore, gracious King, 
remember yourself ; have pity upon your soul, 



104 ^^^ PROTESTANT 

and think that the day is even at hand when 
you shall give account of your office, and of the 
blood which hath been shed with your sword." 
This letter was written in December, 1530. 

Latimer^ s Account of his former Opinions and Con- 

version, 

** I thought, in times past, that the Pope could 
have delivered from purgatory, at his pleasure, 
with a word of his mouth : now I abhor my su- 
perstitious foolishness. I thought in times past 
that divers images of saints could have holpen 
me : now I know that one can help as well as 
another. It were too long to tell you what 
blindness I have been in, and how long it were 
ere I could forsake such folly, it was so incorpo- 
rated in me : but by continual prayer, continual 
study of Scripture, and oft communing with men 
of more right judgment, God hath delivered me." 

The man who was so honest in the avowal 
of his sentiments, was ready to suffer for them. 
He resigned his bishopric of Worcester, after the 
Act of the Six Bloody Articles were passed, in 
1539, rather than hold preferment under a sys- 



FOREFATHERS. 103 

tern of Stale religion, wherein such unscriptural 
and violent measures were adopted. When 
Mary came to the throne, he was a very old 
man, and living in retirement, but he was soon 
singled out for persecution, and committed to 
prison. In his place of confinement, he put the 
following declarations to paper : " In my prison 
I have read the Testament over seven times, but 
I could never find in the institution of the sa^ 
crament either flesh or bones, or the word tran- 
substantiation. You have changed the most 
holy communion into a wicked and horrible 
sacrifice of idolatry, and you deny to the lay 
people the cup, which is directly against God's 
institution, which saith, * Drink ye all of this ;' 
and where you should preach the benefit of 
Christ's death to the people, you speak to the 
wall in a foreign tongue." 

Latimer perished in the flames in the year 
1555, with Ridley, Bishop of London. At the 
last, his body seemed to acquire new strength 
with his indomitable spirit, and, to the astonish- 
ment of the spectators, he was seen to Uft him- 
self up, and to stand erect at the stake. When 
the fagots were blazing, he stretched forth his 
9* 



106 OUR PROTESTANT 

arms to the fire, and exclaimed, in a loud and 
cheerful voice, "Brother Ridley, be of good 
comfort ; we shall this day light such a candle 
in England, as, by God's grace, shall never be 
put out." 

The immortal fame of Jewel, Bishop of Sa- 
lisbury, does not rest, like that of the martyrs, 
whose names I have just recited, on his dying 
testimony at the stake, but on evidence by which 
he yet speaketh — ^his ' Apology for the Church 
of England,' one of the noblest specimens of 
theological reasoning which Protestant ever put 
forth. His renown is perpetuated also in the 
record of his controversy with Harding. " I 
defy you," said he, in that dispute, " to find Ro- 
manism in the Bible ; I defy you to find it in 
the six first centuries ; I defy you to' uphold it 
by the authority of the earliest interpreters of 
the Bible ; I defy you to establish it by the con- 
sent of those who, in primitive times, bore wit- 
ness to the truth." 

Jewel was born in the year 1522; and while 
he was yet a stripling he gave such an earnest 
of his future character, that it was predicted of 
him by his tutor, " Surely St. Paul's Cross will 



FOREFATHERS. 107 

one day ring of this boy." His early habits of 
study were so severe, that he imposed the duty 
upon himself of rising at four in the morning, 
and of poring over his books for the greatest part 
of eighteen hours every day. Abstemiousness 
and self-denial, and the most exemplary moral 
conduct, distinguished his university career at 
Oxford as much as his profound learning, and 
wrung from the Popish dean of his college an 
expression of approbation, highly complimen- 
tary, — " I should love thee. Jewel, if thou wert 
not a Zuinglian. Thou art an heretic in thy . 
faith, but certainly an angel in thy life." This 
proves that while he was yet a very young man, 
he made a public profession of opinions hostile 
to the tenets of Romanism. But, ^^ angel as he 
was in his life," he fell in a moment of weak- 
ness, and subscribed to a paper containing the 
leading articles of the Church whose doctrines 
he abominated. He soon shook off the tram- 
mels imposed on him by the terrors of a cruel 
death, and fled from his country to escape both 
the allurements and the threats of the dominant 
Church in England, when Queen Mary govern- 
ed the realm. At Frankfort he publicly ac- 



108 OUR PROTESTANT 

knowledged the guilt of his apostacy, and de- 
clared from the Church Pulpit, *^ that it was his 
abject and cowardly mind, and faint heart, that 
made his weak hand commit that wickedness." 
From this time to his death. Jewel continued one 
of the most stedfast advocates and brightest 
ornaments of the Protestant faithi "It is an 
easy thing," said one of his biographers, " for 
those who were never tried, to censure the frailty 
of those that have truckled for some time under 
the shock of a mighty temptation; But let such 
remember St; Paul's advice : ' Let him that 
standeth take heed lest he fall.' This great 
man's fall shall ever be my lesson ; and if his 
glittering Jewel were thus clouded and foiled, 
God be merciful to me a sinner." 

When a change of things enabled Jewel to 
return home, he took a lead in the discussions 
and proceedings which finally placed the Re- 
formed Church of England on the high place, 
among Christian churches, which she now occu- 
pies ; and it was at St. Paul's Cross, as- the in- 
structor of his youth foresaw, that be put forth 
one of those challenges to the Romanists, which 
established his reputation, arid extended it at 



FOREFATHERS. 109 

once far beyond his own country. "If any 
man," said he " can prove either of the following 
articles, by any one clear and plain sentence, 
either out of the Scriptures or out of the works 
of the old Fathers — or by a Canon of any old 
General Assembly — or by any example of the 
Primitive Church, then I promise and bind my- 
self to go over to his party. 

" I. That there was any private mass in the 
world at that time, for the space of six hundred 
years after Christ ; 

^' II. Or, that there was any Communion min- 
istered unto the people under one kind ; 

" III. Or, that the people had their Common 
Prayers then in a strange tongue, that they un- 
derstood not ; 

" IV. Or, that the Bishop of Rome was then 
called an Universal Bishop, or the Head of the 
Universal Church; 

" V. Or, that the people were then taught to 
believe that Christ's body is really, substantially, 
carnally, or naturally, in the Sacrament ; 

*' VI. Or, that his Body is, or, may be, in a 
thousand places, or more, at one time ; 



110 OUR PROTESTANT 

" VII. Or, that the priest did then hold up the 
Sacrament over his head ; 

" VIII. Or, that the people did then fall down 
and worship it with godly honour ; 

" IX. Or, that images were then set up in the 
churches, to the intent that the people might 
worship them ; 

" X. Or, that the lay people were theft for- 
bidden to read the Word of God in their own 
tongue." 

A compilation of this brief character cannot 
do justice to a work like " Jewel's Apology for 
the Church of England." It must therefore 
suffice to give an imperfect outline of its con- 
tents. The first section treats of the persecu- 
tions of the Primitive Christians. The second 
recounts the false charges brought against the 
early Reformers. In the third there is an ex- 
position of the doctrines of the Reformed Church, 
The fourth section contains a refutation of the 
accusations against the Reformers. The fifth 
exposes the conduct of the enemies of the Re- 
formation. The sixth is a most luminous de- 
velopment of the causes of the Reformation. 
The seventh proves that the Church of Rome is 



ii pi 



FOREFATHERS. 1 1 1 

not founded on antiquity. The eighth sets forth 
the grounds of our separation from the Church 
of Rome. The ninth and tenth discuss the su- 
premacy of kings and sovereigns. The eleventh 
compares the Pope and St. Peter ; and the last 
section gives a summary view of the preceding 
arguments. 

When Jewel became a bishop, his life was 
spent in almost incessant toil for the good of his 
.diocese and of the Church at large. He was 
pronounced to be one of the " most notable and 
painful prelates of his time." His doors were 
constantly open to the destitute, and he was 
lavish in his attentions to the deserving. " The 
judicious Hooker" was rescued from obscurity by 
the discernment and bounty of bishop Jewel, and 
repaid his benefactor's kindness in the days of 
his own emi.nence, by pronouncing him to be 
'^the worthiest divine that Christendom had 
bred for sorae hundreds of years.*^ Jewel died 
in 1571, worn out by visitations, preachings, and 
episcopal superintendence, wasted to a skeleton, 
and grown prematurely old at forty-nine, by a 
consuming course of study and anxiety, which 
began with hia dawn of reason, and ended only 



112 OUR PROTESTANT 

with his life. Some of his last words were to 
this effect: — "My prayer to the Almighty is, 
that he will vouchsafe either to convert or con- 
found the Roman Pontiff — the author, sower, 
and standard bearer of all the rebellious dissen- 
sions and schisms in the Christian world, who, 
wherever he has planted his foot, has scattered 
abroad the seeds of contention. A crown of 
righteousness is now laid up for me ! Christ is 
my righteousness. Father, thy will be done — 
thy will, I say — not mine, for mine is imperfect 
and depraved !" 

Rowland Taylor, Rector of Hadleigh, in 
Suffolk : when this stout-hearted martyr was 
led through his parish on his way to Aldham 
Common, where he suffered, the expressions of 
public esteem and commiseration attested the 
holiness of his life, and the faithfulness of his 
ministry. At the foot of the bridge there was a 
poor man with five small children ; when he 
saw Dr. Taylor, he and his children fell down 
on their knees, and he held up his hands, and 
cried out with a loud voice — " O, dear father 
and good shepherd, God help and succour thee, 
as thou has many a time succoured me and my 



FOREFATHERS. 113 

poor children!" The streets of Hadleigh were 
beset on both sides of the way with men and 
women, who waited to see him, and take their 
last farewell. When they saw him going to his 
painful death, many of them exclaimed, with 
weeping eyes— "There goes om* good pastor, 
who hath so affectionately instructed us, and 
cared for us. O merciful God, what will his 
scattered flock do without him !" Such witness 
had this servant of Christ of his piety and de- 
votedness, while he exercised his office of paro- 
chial minister. 

Bernard Gilpin, born 1517. Of the num- 
berless ornaments of the Protestant faith, while 
it was yet struggling for ascendancy in England, 
there is not one of whom we have more reason 
to be proud than of Bernard Gilpin. He com- 
bined in his venerated person every Christian 
character, which we are in the habit of loving 
and respecting. He was the diligent student, 
the steady inquirer after truth, the ardent preach- 
er of the Gospel, the faithful parish priest, the 
unwearied missionary, (carrying the Word of 
Life to the remotest parts of the county in which 
he lived,) and the munificent patron of humble 
10 



114 OUR PROTESTANT 

merit. Before he declared himself an advocate 
of the sound principles of Protestantism, he not 
only read diligently and weighed well the argu- 
ments for and against Romanism, but he sought 
out the company of the best reasoners on each 
side of the question, and even travelled into 
foreign countries that he might consult the 
ablest divines on the Continent. It was not till 
after much prayer, much dehberation, and the 
deepest conviction, that he took upon himself 
the office of a Protestant minister; and from 
that time till the hour of his death, his whole 
life was one continued offering of body, mind, 
heart, soul, and strength, to God his Maker, and 
to Christ his Redeemer. He might have held 
the highest dignities of the Church, but he 
refused them; and thus he testified against 
worldly ambition. He expended all the produce 
of his living, the Rectory of Hough ton-le-Spring, 
on works of charity and hospitality ; and thus 
he acquired a name for disinterested goodness, 
which his most bitter religious adversaries could 
not refuse him. He was so scrupulously con- 
scientious, that nothing could induce him to act 
against his own views of right and wrong. Up- 



FOREFATHERS. 115 

on an occasion in early life, when he thought he 
could not properly perform the duties of a vicar- 
age conferred on him, he resigned it. , He was 
told he might absent himself, and hold it by the 
bishop's dispensation. " Dispensation !" said 
he ; " will any dispensation restrain the tempter 
from endeavouring in my absence to corrupt the 
people committed to my care ? I fear it would 
be but an ill excuse for the harm done to my 
flock, if I should say, Avhen God shall call me to 
account for my stewardship, that I was absent 
by dispensation." 

Gilpin's own history of his conversion will 
prove the best account that can be given of his 
devout frame of mind and ardent love of truth. — 
" You require me to write in a long discourse the 
manner of my conversion from superstition to 
the light of the Gospel, which I think you know 
was not in a few years. As time and health 
will permit, I shall hide nothing from you, con- 
fessing my own shame, and yet hoping with the 
Apostle — ' I have obtained mercy, because I did 
it ignorantly.' Many things gave me occasion 
to search both the Scriptures and ancient Fa- 
thers ; whereby I began to see many great 



i 116 OUR PROTESTANT 

abuses, and some enormities used and maintain- 
ed in Popery ; and to like well of sundry refor- 
mations on the other side. 

'* Afterwards, in three years' space, I saw so 
much gross idolatry at Paris, Antwerp, and other 
places, that made me to mislike more and more 
the Popish doctrines, especially because the learn- 
ed men disallowed image- worship in their schools^ 
and suffered it so grossly in their churches, 

" I reasoned with certain that were learned of 
my acquaintance, why there was no reformation 
of these gross enormities, abou^t images, relics, 
pilgrimages, buying mass and trentals, with 
many other things, which, in King Edward's 
time, the Catholics (so called) did not only grant 
to be far amiss, but, also promised that the 
Church should be reformed, if ever the authority 
came into their hands' again. When I asked 
when this reformation was to begin, in hope 
whereof I was the more willing to return from 
Paris, I was answered,—^ We may not grant to 
the ignorant people that any of these things 
hath been amiss : if we do, they will straight 
infer other things may be amiss as well as these, 
and still go further and further.' This grieved 



FOREFATHERS. 117 

me, and made me seek for quietness in God's 
Word : nowhere else I could find any stay. 

"Thus in process of time I grew to be stronger 
and stronger ; yet many grievous temptations 
and doubts have I had, which many nights have 
bereaved me of sleep. 

" My nature hath evermore fled controversy 
so much as I could. My delight and desire 
hath been to preach Christ, and our salvation 
by him, in simplicity and truth ; and to comfort 
myself with the sweet promises of the Gospel, 
and in prayer. 

^^ I have been always scrupulous and troubled, 
either in subscribing or swearing to any thing 
besides the Scriptures and articles of our belief, 
because the Scriptures ought ever to have a pre- 
eminence above man's writings. 

" And certainly, since I took this order to open 
my faults in writing, not pausing who knew 
them, so it might edify myself or others, I have 
found great ease and quietness of conscience : 
and am daily more edified, comforted and con- 
firmed, in reading the Scriptures. And this I 
praise God for, that when I was most troubled, 
and weakest of all, my faith in God's mercy was 



1 1 8 OUR PROTESTANT 

SO strong, that if I should then have departed 
this life, I had, and have, a sure trust, that none 
of these doubts v^ould have hindered my salva- 
tion. I hold fast one sentence of St. Paul, — 
' I have obtained mercy, in that I did it in igno- 
rance ;' and another of Job, — ' If the Lord put 
me to death, yet will I trust in him.' Yet have 
I prayed God's mercy many times for all these 
ofiences, infirmities, and ignorances; and so I 
will do so still, so long as I have to live in the 
world." 

These anecdotes will show that our Protestant 
forefathers were supported in their own minds 
and conduct, and that they promoted the cause 
of the Reformation, by their faithful adherence 
to the peculiar and distinguishiug truths of the 
Gospel. They confessed and preached Christ 
in the divinity of his person, in the efficacy of 
his atonement, in the fulness and freeness of his 
grace, and in the supreme virtr.e of his interces- 
sion. By the force of these doctrines, and by the 
example of their holy lives, they cast down the 
strong holds of superstition, and they re-erected 
in their place that temple for the performance of 



w^ 



FOREFATHERS. 119 

" a reasonable service," which never can again 
be destroyed, as long as the Bible continues 
to be read in the vernacular language of Eng- 
land. 



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